If you're thinking that the star of the week is Windows Azure however, then you are absolutely correct.  You can read more about it below, but let's just say that it will go "live" to businesses come January 2010.  Customers get a free month's usage though, and billing will commence only on February 1.  Now, I'm not sure if I'm the only one who caught it, but February 1 is written as 02012010.

While it's hardly 2010 yet, Microsoft also used PDC 09 as an opportunity to unveil the Office 2010 beta.  Apparently, Microsoft wants "millions and millions" of users to give the free beta download a spin, so do check it out if you have a penchant for beta testing software.  I haven't tried it myself, but the chorus from those who did indicates that this software build is perfectly robust.  In the tradition of Windows 7 RC's ultra-long evaluation period, the Office 2010 beta is apparently valid until October of 2010 too.

As regular readers are no doubt aware, I've switched my primary machine to Windows 7 a couple of months back, and never looked back.  For those of you keen to learn why Windows 7 just seems to, well, run so much better, below are some details that will hopefully scratch your curiosities.

So where do you want to go today?  Whatever it is: cloud computing, office productivity, or something else - Microsoft appears to have all the bases covered. - Paul

What I found interesting was that much of the performance improvements came about by addressing gross inefficiencies in scheduling and thread management.  This was apparently especially pronounced on larger systems running databases; resulting in some applications running "15 times faster on Windows Server 2008 R2" than in earlier systems.  And the best thing is that no modifications or recompilation was required to existing applications to enjoy the speed boosts.

For more on this story:

- check out this article at TechNewsWorld

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When it comes to JavaScript, Microsoft is really way behind.  In order to appreciate the vast chasm in performance, consider that Chrome performs JavaScript benchmarking tests 10 times faster than Internet Explorer 8, while Firefox performs them at four times the speed.

Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager, Internet Explorer, is not frazzled, however.  In a blog entry, Hachamovitch showed how strident improvements have already been made to IE9's JavaScript performance.  In addition, he also shared of how IE9 will leverage the hardware acceleration in modern GPUs for its graphics and text rendering.  By not limiting the Web browser to the processing limitations of the CPU, Hachamovitch is working to make IE render graphically-rich sites faster and better than competing browsers.

For more on this story:

- check out this article at Ars Technica

- check out this article at PC World

Takeshi Numoto, the corporate vice president for Office, explained the rationale for the beta to Computerworld in an interview mid-week, "Instead of tens of thousands who tried the Technical Preview, now we're talking about millions and millions of people."

Will Microsoft enforce any numeric cap to Office 2010 beta as it did for the Release Candidate of the Windows 7 operating system?  It appears that the answer is no.  Will Microsoft shut off availability at some point?  "I'm not sure if we have a specific plan to shut off availability at some point," says Numoto, before reiterating Microsoft's plan to ensure that Office 2010 gets maximum exposure.

The download is available from the Microsoft site here.

For more on this story:

- check out this article at Computerworld

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At the PDC 2009, Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie said, "We're moving into an era of solutions that are experienced by users across PCs, phones and the Web, and that are delivered from datacenters we refer to as private clouds and public clouds. Built specifically for this era of cloud computing, Windows Azure and SQL Azure will give developers what they need to build great applications and profitable businesses."

To chain together the various services in the Azure cloud, AppFabric will provide the requisite Access Controls for developers to seamlessly manage both local and Azure-based services.  Another project, codenamed "Sydney" will eventually allow customers to connect their own servers with Windows Azure-based data and services, though this is in development and will only go into beta in 2010. 

The servers for Azure will be hosted in three regional pairs of data centers, geographically separated for resiliency in the event of a catastrophe.  It is not known whether more such data centers will eventually be set up around the world.

For more on this story:

- check out this article at PC World

- check out this article at Network World

For one, the Chrome OS will not support hard disks, only solid state drives.  All user data is also synced to the cloud.  And if you're wondering if your netbook has what it takes to run the Chrome OS when it's released, forget it.  The only way to ‘install' the OS is to purchase a Chrome OS.  In a nutshell, the machine boots up from a custom firmware into an optimized and protected kernel.

Because Google started from scratch, the search engine giant was able to weave security into every aspect of the operating system.  For one, the OS boots up using a ‘verified boot' process, with no other app trusted by the OS.  Indeed, all transient data on the user-partition is encrypted for heightened security.  Once booted-up, the front end of the Chrome OS is represented by - you guessed it - the Google Chrome Web browser.  For more in-depth technical information, you can also check out the Google Operating System blog here.

For more on this story:

- check out this article at CNET.com

So it's essential to make sure your 2010 telecom budget will be solid and approved right down the line. And you're just hoping that last year's massive cuts won't be repeated. According to CIO Magazine, IT shops reduced budgets by an average of 22 percent from '08 to '09 and head count by an average of 17 percent.

Make sure you include the following in your budget:

> Support for mobile workers, including hardware, software, services and devices.

> Branch office support.

> Review emerging technologies, including VoIP.

> Plans to upgrade your routers, switches and wireless LAN gear.

> Up-to-date videoconferencing.

Each of these items is essential, and you cannot afford to zero any of them out. If budget cuts continue, figure out other ways to save money, not on your telecom budget.

For more on your telecom budget:
- see this cio.com article

With over 300 million people using Facebook, the social network wants people to understand its policies and make them more accessible. And as Facebook becomes a business tool, it's important for IT executives to understand its policy positions, too. It was completely rewritten and made more user friendly.

Among the changes:

> Legal and technical language was replaced with simple terms that people can understand.

> The privacy document provided key points at the beginning and easy links to jump to the different sections.

> You may change or delete your profile information at any time by going to your profile page and clicking "Edit My Profile." Information will be updated immediately. You cannot delete your date of birth but you can hide the information.

> You may deactivate it or delete your account. When you deactivate an account, no user will be able to see it, but it will not be deleted. We save your profile information (friends, photos, interests, etc.) in case you later decide to reactivate your account.

> Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others.

Facebook made it clear that its privacy policy is a work in progress. It received less than 7,000 comments and ideas for its privacy policy but is always open to new ideas.

We're sure this is not the end of the debate on the social network that is now becoming embedded at work and home for so many people.

For more on Facebook's privacy policies:
- see this cnet.com article

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Take for example FBI Director Robert Mueller. His wife banned him from doing online banking after he came close to failing for a phishing attempt, according to an article in CNET News.

Phishers are becoming more sophisticated as they lure unsuspecting computer users into their den. They are increasingly exploiting people's interest in news to trick people into clicking on links. Email about swine flu is especially popular these days. Users of social networks are also becoming popular targets. Twitter users have been directed to fake log-in pages. Hackers are turning to instant messaging, too, to lure people to their traps.

What are you to do? Teach your employees the signs of a phishing attempt. Phishing is often launched outside the U.S. so there are often misspellings and grammatical notes. Some have an urgent tone. Delete those immediately.

Never give out personal information via email. That's the easiest way to get trapped. Don't open email attachments that you did not expect to get. Change passwords frequently. We cannot emphasize this enough. Use antivirus and antispam software. Stay alert and monitor your accounts frequently.

Every IT department has their dos and don'ts for their operating systems. Just make sure your staff knows what they are and follows them.

For more on phishing attacks:
- see this cnet.com article

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At work, it's a different story. Your boss hasn't refreshed your computer system in three years. Your computer is sluggish and running old software.

Do they even know about the latest technology to make your job an easier one?

There's always talk about new stuff, but little action at the office. IT budgets are stuck and stalled so plans to update the equipment may be sitting on that back burner somewhere. It's definitely better to get the one-size-fits-all model for the office, so many bosses think, but does that make the best business sense?

There is a wide array of new deals on the market that give workers greater freedom without breaking the bank, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. So why not get creative, encourage your workers to be their best and get rid of those aging desktops that are making you a laughing stock at the office? Check with your workers about what they like because maybe they have already found a cost-effective way to be smart and streamlined, too.

For more on today's workplace computers:
- see this Wall Street Journal article

Most workers are just happy to have a job at all, but then reality sets in, according to Bob Nelson, Ph.D, author of Keeping Up in a Down Economy: What the Best Companies Do to Get Results in Tough Times. But then the weariness sets up. Employees suddenly realize they are doing more and working longer hours without the hope of a raise or even the time to take earned vacation, he told computerworld.com.

And that's when productivity can suffer, many experts say.

So it's time for the manager to step in with some targeted ways to keep workers motivated. Among the suggestions:

> Help workers prioritize their workloads so they don't feel inundated with work.

> Have some fun. Throw a bowling party or a Super Bowl one.

> You can't afford big bonuses but you can give a $50 gift certificate to a team that finished a project under deadline.

> Give your workers a chance to learn about other sides of the business. Rotate workers who want to try something new.

> Offer flexible work arrangements, job sharing, telework, or other non-traditional ways to be employed.

> Encourage friendly competition so every team has a goal to make and a challenge from others to get there.

Nelson advises managers to motivate workers with personal conversations, letting them know just how important they are in the workplace.

"When you have something that needs to be done, and you [choose] the person who can do it best, tell him that," Nelson said. "Or you might say, 'I know you want to get into management and a key skill is interacting with customers, and this project will let you work on that,' so employees will know why you're picking them. Or it could be because it's the hot new system or because this is our key customer."

Whatever your solution, make sure you have one. Remember that your workers are not robots but people who still need motivation beyond getting a paycheck every week.

For more on motivating your workers:
- see this computerworld.com article

But there are many big time CIOs doing quite well, thank you. CIO Magazine has just published its annual list of the highest paid CIOs at public companies for 2008, including their salaries and total compensation packages. That includes stock, incentive payouts, perks, pension contributions and other benefits.

Despite the dizzying numbers, the magazine says there has been a decline in top pay. There's also plenty of evidence that IT pay is stagnating.

Discretionary pay has plummeted with 37 of the 52 on the list earning no bonuses, according to CIO magazine.

There's also been a lot of turnover. Seventeen CIOs on last year's list weren't on it this year. Some of them got promotions, such as Barbara Desoer, who earned $10.5 million at Bank of America, who was promoted president of the bank's Mortgage, Home Equity and Insurance Services business.

Others remained but dropped out of the circle of top five highest-paid officers at their companies, such as Robert Carter at FedEx, Dave Kepler at Dow Chemical and Thomas Kingsbury at Kohl's. At the top of the list is Randall Mott, the executive vice president and CIO at Hewlett Packard. His salary was $690,000. His total compensation: $28 million--wow!

Running far behind him in second place is Larry Kittelberg--the senior vice president for technology and operations at Honeywell International. His base salary is $713,000. His total package: $8 million

Boston Scientific pays Sam Leno, its executive vice president for finance and information systems and its CFO, $622,000 a year. His total package: $6.3 million.

Following these three top executives is Steve Squeri making $600,000 a year with a total package of $6.2 million, and Bill Chenevich, vice chairman, technology and operations service at US Bankcorp, making $538,000 with a 5.3 million compensation package.

The big question here is how did these executives get there and what does it take to stay there?

The bigger question is would you want all of their headaches in a year that saw such great contraction and uncertainty?.

For a full list of who's at the top of the CIO salary list:
- See this cio.com article

For more on the best paying IT jobs:
- see this computerworld.com article

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According to an article on My Digital Life, two utilities, called "RemoveWAT" and "Chew-WGA," remove the activation technologies or keep them from operating. Both utilities trick Windows 7 into reporting that it has been activated.

A Microsoft spokeswoman told Computerworld that the company knows about the hacks and is addressing them.

Microsoft certainly is no stranger to anti-activation hacks, and has typically used Windows Update to distribute changes to users. My Digital Life believes that Microsoft may make the same move with Windows 7 workarounds.

"As [the] cracks based on removal of activation component involves patching, changes and modification to many system files, it's likely to be easily detected and nullified by Microsoft, especially in [the] next WGA update or Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2," My Digital Life reported.

In July, Microsoft confirmed that pirates cracked the Windows 7 activation. The cause of a leak of an OEM disk image from Lenovo, one of Microsoft's major OEM partners. The disk contained a master OEM key and the requisite activation certificate to enable the release version of Windows 7. Microsoft gives OEMs the ability to pre-activate its operating system in the factory to ease the hassle for end-users.

For more:
- read this My Digital Life post
- read this Computerworld article

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While Amazon has helped mold the cloud computing market with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Burton Group said the secrecy surrounding its cloud data centers prevents enterprises from determining the risk involved with putting their applications on it, according to a report titled "Amazon EC2: Is it ready for the enterprise?" written by analyst Drue Reeves.  

Amazon claims its data centers meet Tier 4 specifications,  which include redundant power, backup power, networking and HVAC systems.

"However, no outside firm has inspected or audited Amazon's data centers to verify these claims," Reeves wrote. "Due to lack of available information and audited inspection regarding Amazon's data centers, Burton Group cannot verify Amazon's availability claims."

An Amazon spokeswoman told Network World that the Burton Group's report includes inaccurate information, such as the firm's statement that Amazon doesn't support SAS 70 security certification when it does have that type of certification.

"In terms of reliability, we often hear from our customers that AWS [Amazon Web Services] can achieve higher degrees of performance than they've been able to achieve on their own," she said.

Last month, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targeted at a site hosted on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) solution left the site down for 16 hours.

For more:
- check out this Network World article

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"Very few companies have systems in place to make use of their data," said IDC's Enterprise Storage Systems research vice president Benjamin Woo in a V3.co.uk article. "They have to answer the difficult question of what data is relevant."

Woo said "the key is to take the data and make money from it. Preserved data can be used in business intelligence and analytics applications to get a return on it. IT departments are like bankers--they have to hold the digital assets as the custodian for the corporation."

To accomplish this, Woo recommends cloud storage and a virtualization strategy. "Even though businesses can encrypt data, there remains a basic trust issue, although this is changing as people leverage the email cloud," he said.

Virtualized data centers also enable each data piece to be made available for different processes, Woo said. By 2010, investment in virtualization should grow, he added.

For more:
- see this V3.co.uk article

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The "ICSA Labs Product Assurance Report" was created with the Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations research arm. The researchers drew on tests of thousands of security products during the last two decades and aim to educate buyers about the typical problems associated with the certification process.

The report said 4 percent of products actually pass the first round. Of course, most manufacturers address the problems and resubmit them for approval, after which 82 percent of products submitted for certification go on to eventually receive it. Products included in the study were anti-virus, network firewall, Web app firewall, network IPS, IPSec VPN, SSL VPN and custom testing products.

For more:
- check out this InformationWeek article

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Called Blue Insight, the project will make more than a whopping petabyte of information instantly available to its employees to help them make better decisions. Moreover, IBM wants to make the service's architecture, which it calls IBM Smart Analytics Cloud, available to customers.

"This new model of cloud computing will provide our employees with a single place to access real business insights, improve standards compliance, and create a repository of best practices throughout the company," said IBM CIO Pat Toole in a statement. "I expect this first of its kind approach will help drive both new growth opportunities as well as have a significant impact in cost savings, which is exactly what businesses are asking today of their cutting edge IT organizations."

The service will run on a 48-processor IBM System Z10 mainframe that can handle up to 10,000 secure transactions per second. Its commercial offering also runs on an a System z mainframe and will include business intelligence tools from IBM Cognos 8 BI.

In related news, AT&T introduced Synaptic Compute as a Service, which is designed to allow IT employees to store and maintain internal applications using AT&T's cloud. The unique feature is the ability for businesses to ratchet up capacity and availability as needed, thus saving businesses money because they don't have to maintain full network capacity around the clock.

For more:
- see this InformationWeek article
- read this Cnet article

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As technology has gone global, so has business. Yours is probably one of them. And now you find yourself with a new set of challenges and obstacles at every corner. And you probably already know that businesses in developing markets face disadvantages, mostly a result of political meddling for generations.

"From an IT perspective, these markets need to grow at an investment rate that makes sense for them," said Wayne Shurts, CIO of Cadbury, the $7.8 billion global candy maker. "What they need today may not be what they need tomorrow. And tomorrow might actually mean tomorrow."

An article in CIO.com explains that as globalization reaches emerging markets, IT leaders face new management challenges and offers advice on balancing the many challenges that can be out of this world. For starters, the article explains it's important to get out of your comfort zone. Don't rely on local vendors and "experts" to do your job.

Overseas, many IT companies are mom-and-pop operations that focus on lower end tools rather than whiz ones that are more expensive. Sometimes it's hard to find qualified personnel so the operation must be supervised 24/7, the article explains.

For more on outsourcing in emerging markets:
- see this CIO.com article

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"If your mess is a mess, and you turn it over, it's still going to be a mess," Kline said. "You could do an offshore...where your management staff is saying, 'It's over there. It's not my problem anymore.' And that's not true. IT's still your mess. Get it as clean as you can get it."

He said that virtualization and consolidation are key to getting a company's IT infrastructure "clean" for outsourcing. Part of the process is making sure employees are in the right place. And it may be preferable to locate key workers in other parts of the United States or overseas with the outsourcing center.

Nevertheless, an article by eWeek.com warns that the very idea of outsourcing will present an emotional reaction from U.S. workers. It cites a September survey by Amplitude Research, which found that nearly two-thirds of the 350 IT professionals surveyed reported an unauthorized intrusion in their outsourced systems in the last two years.

For more on getting your IT shop ready for outsourcing:
- see this eWeek.com article

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MIT's TechnologyReview last week reported on a technology conference in Denver that suggested taking some lessons from social web technologies to get your email under better control. Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft's future social experiences labs, told the conference that email has to be processed more intelligently.

Businesses have access to plenty of tools that can help, including instant messages and desktop searches, not to mention LinkedIn and Twitter.Those tools should be tapped to organize email around special tops, such as projects or certain groups of contacts, she said.

It can be used to prioritize email or deemphasize less important messages. For instance, Cheng said that about 70 percent of the email people receive is information they don't need to read but have on file.

One way to tip off the user about the email received is to create a daily summary by category instead of a free-for-all in the inbox. Email needs to be put in a lot more context, adds Michael Cerda, founding CEO of cc:Betty, a system designed to help organize group discussions. "Let's wake up the data," he told the conference. "Let's bring it to life. If there's a place, give it an address."

Some services are moving in the right direction. Google's email, for instance, extracts mentions of dates and times from email, and offers to move them to a calendar. That's a good idea, but most people need to read the email first and then move it to their calendar on their own, don't you think?

The thing to remember about email is that it's time is just about up. It was one of the original tools on the Internet as it became available to everyone. It may be hard to break an old habit, but it can be done. After all, no one really remembers payphones or the green computer screen, do they?

For more on changing email:
- see this TechnologyReview article

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The spam messages pretend to come from the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA), a U.S. nonprofit association that oversees the Automated Clearing House system (ACH). ACH is a widely used by system used by financial institutions for exchanging details of direct deposits, checks and cash transfers.

In the last few months, countless businesses have lost money through ACH fraud. It happens when the hackers obtain the authentication credentials required to transfer money. Although NACHA has no direct involvement in the processing of the payments, spammers have launched a campaign with messages purporting to be from the organization saying that an ACH payment has been rejected.

The spam messages have a link to a fake website that looks like NACHA's. The site asks the victim to download a PDF file, but it is actually an executable. If launched, the file will install Zbot, also known as Zeus, an advanced piece of banking malware that can harvest the authentication details required to initiate an ACH transaction, according to M86 Security.

NACHA has put an advisory on its website, warning: "NACHA does not send communications to individuals or organizations about individual ACH transactions that they originate or receive."

With this kind of sophisticated trickery, the question becomes: How do you stop it? For starters, make sure you publicize the scheme and keep ACH clients well-trained to refuse emails even if they look real. And even if you are working in another business sector, pay attention to this story because spam could be targeting you next.

For more on this fraudulent scam:
- see this Computerworld article

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But IT workers are still feeling the heat. The unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent last month, and the technology sector is still feeling the pain. CIOZone recently put together all the recent layoffs in the IT sector, and it's not a pretty picture. Sure, everyone needs IT, but how much? And when will the urge for IT talent translate into new jobs?

Here are some of the layoffs outlined:

* Sprint Nextel is planning to cut 2,500 jobs by the end of the year. While Sprint says the layoffs won't affect customer service, they did not say how many would specifically be IT jobs. We're pretty sure a chunk of them will be.

* One that very specifically affects IT is Adobe, which is planning to cut 680 workers from its staff of 7,000. Adobe recently acquired web analytics company Omniture for $1.8 billion. But Adobe says none of the current layoffs are related to that purchase.

* Earlier this month, Microsoft said it was laying off another 800 workers after previously giving pink slips to 5,000 employees. One of the casualties was high-profile executive Don Doge, director of business development for the emerging business team. Doge blogged on his Website that the layoff was "a total surprise to me, and management offered no explanation. This is pretty standard procedure, mostly for legal reasons, but nonetheless, left me with a cold feeling...but only for a minute or two."

For more on IT layoffs:
- see this CIOZone article

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In the latest twist in this case, the two computer programmers--Jerome O'Hara and George Perez--were charged with conspiracy, falsifying books and records of a broker-dealer, and falsifying books and records of an investment dealer.

Their connection with Madoff runs deep. They were employed as computer programmers at Madoff's business, BLMIS, for nearly 20 years where they were responsible for developing and maintaining computer programs that supported the operation of Madoff's investment account business, the DoJ said.

"Jerome O'Hara and George Perez allegedly helped construct Bernie Madoff's house of cards," Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. "The computer codes and random algorithms they allegedly designed served to deceive investors and regulators and concealed Madoff's crimes. Today they have been charged for their roles in Madoff's epic fraud."

The Justice Department alleged that O'Hara and Perez knew that the special programs they developed contained fraudulent information.

For more on the computer programmers and their alleged part in Madoff's scheme:
- see this Computerworld article

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Botnets used to be much simpler affairs. In the past, they typically relied on a single, static source, such as an IRC channel to websites from which to control the thousands of compromised computers, or zombies. Such bots proved relatively easy to eliminate, as security researchers using network sniffers were able to quickly identify these static CnCs and put them out of commission.

To combat that, modern botnets now have mechanisms to dynamically generate a range of domains to check. The spammers who created these bots are able to determine the domains that these botnets are scheduled to check, and hence, can register them at any point to gain control of their bots.

As such, the respite is only temporary. Of course, because the security team (for now) control the domains checked by the botnet, they will also be able to log onto the IP addresses of infected host. Assuming they can put together some automated way to send notifications to the administrators of infected domains, perhaps many of these nodes can be permanently put out of commission.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Ars Technica

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While datacenters are hardly ripping out their 1Gb Ethernet installations, the use of 10Gb equipment is making inexorable inroads as they are increasingly chosen in the course of upgrading, or architected as part of network backbones. What Fujitsu has done is package a high performance switch into a small form factor, which uses less power.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek

While its earlier focus on the enterprise SSD market can only be described as lackluster at best, Computerworld reports that Intel has planned a new lineup of SSDs for the enterprise. With capacities of 50GB, 100GB and 200GB respectively, they will be well positioned to match the capacities of high-end enterprise SSDs currently on the market.

Samples of the X25-V are already with computer equipment makers, and should be available by January 2010. The new family enterprise-class drives, on the other hand, aren't expected to be available until the middle of the year.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld

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According to Network World, flaws in 37 different components of Mac OS X were updated this time. The significance of these vulnerabilities is that more than half of these areas--32 out of 58--involve critical weaknesses that could lead to remote exploitation.

Apple has earned itself an infamous reputation for being lackluster for its slow pace of security updates. While it eventually issues patches, the company often is slow to do so. This is significant because Apple uses a number of parts from open-source projects in the Mac operating system, yet releases updates for these components up to many months after the problems were resolved by the open-source community.

In the meantime, this latest security update can be downloaded from Apple here, or installed by using Mac OS X's integrated update service. If you are on the Mac OS X, be sure to apply this update as soon as possible.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Network World

Dave Donatelli, HP's vice president of networking, noted that, "By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com's extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center."

In a conference call with analysts, Donatelli pointed out that the combination of HP's superior distribution channels and 3Com's "best-in-class products" will result in a transformation in the networking world.

In addition, this move also will strengthen HP's position in China, which 3Com has spent years focusing on--3Com's H3C networking unit is a market leader there. The deal drove the share price of 3Com to $7.90--39 percent higher than its closing price on Wednesday.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at CNNMoney.com
- check out this article at Network World Asia

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The survey found that three quarters of organizations that conduct formal risk assessments found patient data at risk due to inadequate security controls, policies and processes. These findings are hardly a surprise but it increases the urgency for private companies to do something about this security issue before their systems are hacked and data is stolen.

"One-third of respondents reported that their organization has had at least one known case of medical identity theft at their organization. Only a handful of these organizations, however, have experienced direct consequences from the breach," HIMSS said.

Some of the survey's findings were alarming. Healthcare organizations aren't using current security technologies. Respondents widely use logs from firewalls, applications and servers as information sources, yet only 25 percent of respondents reported electronic analysis of the data. Only two-thirds or respondents used encryption, and half encrypt stored data.

These organizations share their patient data electronically, mostly with state governments, and that raises an even greater question about the safety and security of the information. E-mail encryption and single sign-on were the security technologies not currently available that were most likely to be installed in the future, according to the survey.

For more on e-health and security:
- check out this InformationWeek.com article

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You're sharp enough to realize that identity theft is a big problem so it's important to prevent illegal access to personal and financial data. You may be someone who uses the same password for every site you access. Or you may be someone who always uses his or her Social Security number, which is one of the biggest "no-no's" in the security world.

There are several strategies you can use and ways to remember the password when you need it. Here are a few tips:

• A Windows program called RoboForm from Siber Systems stores your passwords, usernames, personal information and the URLs of sites you visit on its secure server. Your information is protected by a master password.
• 1Password provides the same features for use on Apple hardware.
• If you don't want to spend the money, you could put your passwords in a password-protected file.

At the end of the day, be smart about your passwords. Don't use your Social Security number or your street address. Forget about your dog's name or your son's. Be creative and be aware that a password is the first line of defense against identity theft.

For more on secure passwords:
- see this CIO.com article

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Gartner Research is suggesting that now is a great time to take a tough look at how IT functions within a business because 2010 is a prime time to make a few strategic changes. The research company suggested 11 ways IT should be examined to make 2010 a more productive year.

"We are now within one of the rarest and most fleeting periods in business--nearing the bottom of a recession and before a return to growth," said Ken McGee, Gartner vice president in a statement. "We urge organizations to exploit this unusual opportunity to question the efficacy of their IT business practices and determine whether those practices warrant change. But they need to act now, by the time business growth returns, they will be far too busy, and it will simply be too late to change," he adds.

Here are some areas Gartner suggests evaluating:

• Take advantage of cloud computing
• Improve budgeting
• What's more important, cost savings or business growth?
• Should new CIOs "abandon legacy IT organizational structures?"
• How to prioritize innovation

To move things along for 2010, consider this: In a recent report by Robert Half Technology, the research firm found that companies are looking for managers and workers who have soft skills in business management. That means they must be able to interact with peers in other areas of the company to make sure there is cross-developmental business.

"In addition, professionals who understand how IT initiatives tie to larger business objectives are better able to help firms reduce costs, increase profitability and enhance efficiencies," the Robert Half Technology report said. 

All this means is that you will be able to try out new ideas in 2010 as the economy rebounds and your company is no longer scared to take a risk.

For more on the coming year in IT:
- see this eWeek.com article

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The indictments were announced Tuesday in the brazen electronic-bank heist. One man was arrested in Estonia and is awaiting extradition. The others are believed to be at large. The U.S. Justice Department indicted eight Russian and Eastern European computer hackers, alleging they were part of a crime ring that broke into ATMs in hundreds of cities world-wide and stole $9 million in a matter of hours.

The hack attack involved a complex system to crack a computer system at RBS WorldPay Inc., the U.S. payment processing division of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and clone prepaid ATM cards. The fake cards were used to withdraw cash from more than 2,000 ATMs from 280 cities around the world, including the U.S. It was a synchronized attack on Nov. 8, 2008, that took less than 12 hours to accomplish and absconded with $9 million.

"More money is stolen electronically or [in] data breaches than through bank robberies," Shawn Henry, assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, told the Wall Street Journal.

The hackers clearly knew what they were doing. They targeted payroll debit cards that companies issue employees for withdrawing their salaries. When the hackers entered the systems, they boosted the maximum allowed withdrawal, according to the indictment.

This kind of worldwide hacking scheme is becoming the norm, not the exception, in cybercrime around the world. For a scheme that began far from the U.S., it could have had a major impact on payroll systems in this country and others. The Justice Department worked with authorities in countries from Estonia to Hong Kong. Henry declined to say how the ring was organized, but he did say some rings become virtual organized-crime groups.

For more on this cybercrime:
- see this Wall Street Journal article

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The group took control of more than 200 sites to prove its point, but Facebook downplayed the incident and said no hacking or confidential information was involved, according to an article from Computerworld.com.

The group had another message. "This means we control a certain part of the information about you on Facebook. If we wanted we could make you appear in a bad way which could damage your image," it said on the Facebook sites. "For example we could rename your group and call it something very inappropriate and nasty, like 'I support pedophile's rights,'" the message went on to say. The group then assured members that Control Your Info didn't do that.

The message also promised to restore each hijacked group's name by the "end of next week" and promised not to "mess anything up."

However, while this group did not appear to be damaging anyone's Facebook page, it is a dramatic example of how social media needs to be carefully monitored so the next time a hacker decides to be more than just mischievous, it can be deterred.

For more on the Facebook antics:
- see this Computerworld.com article

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An estimated 16,000 to 20,000 Indian nationals have returned home, Arvind Panagariya, an economics professor at Columbia University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, tells the newspaper. And for the first time, H-1B visas are going unused. In September, six months after the U.S. government began accepting applications for the visas in 2009, only 46,000 petitions had been filed for the 65,000 visas. In 2008, the 65,000 visas were snapped up the first day they became available.

This change is clearly a sign of the rough economic times in the United States that have affected nearly every sector of the economy, including high-tech.

Problems for foreign workers don't end when they return home. Those who return are finding it harder to get a job at an Indian company than it was just a few years ago. If someone has worked abroad for more than seven years, it can be hard to get a job. And managers have to be careful not to pay them more than "locals," the newspaper reported.

Nevertheless, there are predictions that the IT workforce will be resurrected as the recession ends. And there will be new demands for IT talent especially in IT security, and for the return of foreign workers eligible for H-1B visas, according to economic experts.

For more on H-1B visas:
- see this Wall Street Journal article

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Another feature supported by the 9300 would be the use of forward error control coding to improve signal quality, while Transmit Beamforming (TxBF) boosts signal reception. While I would expect 802.11abg products to be around for a while yet, the availability of high performance 802.11n products can only serve to accelerate the shift away from legacy wireless standards. As more enterprise wireless APs are sold with newer 11n chipsets, expect the tipping point to occur sooner rather than later.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Network World

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From a system administrator's point of view, the greatest improvement has to be the self-service web interface that Exchange 2010 offers. Inbox rules, antispam configuration, automatic replies and a host of other options can now be updated by end-users without calling the help desk.

On the down side though, it appears that Exchange 2010 still suffers from a few bugs. I suppose this is subjective, since it would be foolish to claim a "bug-free" software product. Still, it might do well for organizations to put a test deployment through some thorough testing, or to first do a limited roll-out. An alternative would, of course, be to wait for the release of SP1.

Overall, there appears to be quite a number of positive improvements in Exchange 2010. Indeed, the expanded self-service menu has me thinking of ditching my own aging Exchange 2003 installation in favor of a hosted Exchange 2010. Is your organization planning to roll out Exchange 2010? Do share your thoughts with us on this.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld

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So just how much power in a data center is typically used for cooling? As much as half the energy bill, noted Michel. He further warns that "Future data centers will be dominated by energy cost."

In view of this, IBM, together with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, is putting together what it says will be the first-of-a-kind water-cooled supercomputer that will reuse extracted heat for university buildings. The project intends to make use of high-performance liquid cooler on a per-processor level. Already, a prototype has been shown to reuse 75 percent of the energy put into it.

Surely the idea of tapping excess heat to warm buildings is pretty useless when it comes to regions with hot climates? Michel's response to eWeek was that this excess heat can be used for other purposes, such as desalination.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at eWeek

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A cornerstone of Intel's new netbook and nettop platform, the new Pineview CPU essentially combines the Atom N280 core with a memory controller and graphics core into a single processor. This results in even lower overall power consumption--always a good thing when it comes to netbooks.

Performance-wise, the new processor is expected to support HyberThreading and 512KB of L2 cache, as well as dual-core variants for desktops. Intel will make an official announcement toward the end of December, according to the report.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Register Hardware

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The Nook runs on the Android operating system and sports both an e-ink display as well as a color touch screen.  For now, it remains to be seen if a lawsuit by start-up Spring Design for misappropriation of its trade secrets in the Nook's design will result in any further delays.

For more on this story:
-check out this article at CNET

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While the sales pitch for cloud service sounds like a deal--$100 per user, per year sounds pretty good, there are costs associated with the transition, the architecture and the operations, according to an article from CIO.com.

Experts recommend that senior leadership explore a number of questions relating to the cloud to uncover the hidden costs before signing onto a contract for the service.

Here are a few questions that managers should be asking:

• What are the viable paths to move (or replace) legacy applications into the cloud?
• What architectural changes are required to integrate cloud and non-cloud applications?
• How should we change our technology and operations processes to take advantage of different procurement, provisioning and management models?
• How will a private cloud--built for the sole use of one enterprise--give me more flexibility than current hosting or public cloud models? What are the cost trade-offs?

The true costs of this business system are essential to know before an IT manager rushes in to sign up for the cloud. As the article advises: "Remember: It's deceptively easy to get burned on a cloudy day if you're not protected."

For more on hidden cloud costs:
- check out this CIO.com article

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"It's a fantastic business," Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested $10 million in several virtual goods companies, tells the New York Times. "Because it's digital, the marginal cost for every one you sell is zero, so you have 100 percent margins."

Virtual goods have some pretty frivolous motives at play. Users of social networks, for example, can buy each other gifts--images of flowers and birthday cakes. Facebook recently bought into the idea in a big way, expanding its gift store to allow other companies to list their virtual wares, like greeting cards.

Is this where your business wants to be? Probably not, but it could be an enticing area for you to dabble in as you peddle more traditional services, too. Many web companies have not yet figured out how to make money. But those that create and sell virtual goods, companies like Zynga, Playfish and Playdom--three online gaming start-ups in the San Francisco area--say they are recording significant revenue and profits, according to the New York Times.

"It's not about the good itself, it's about the underlying human emotion or desire," Moshe Koyfman, a principal at Spark Capital, which has invested in two virtual-goods start-ups., told the New York Times. "The recipient knows the person took time, picked something meaningful and spent money on it."

For more on the growing virtual world:
- check out this New York Times article

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"In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard," Google said in a blog post. Google has been criticized frequently for amassing large amounts of data about people, but now it is giving users an easy way to find out what information it stores in their accounts.

The Dashboard is set up so that users can control the personal settings in each Google product that they use, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs and more. Until now, this information was available in piecemeal form. Now Google is providing a one-stop shop to see all of the data it holds about an individual. The dashboard for Gmail, for example, will list the number of conversations in your inbox and the total number of conversations in your account.

But John Simpson, of Consumer Watchdog, a frequent critic of Google, said Dashboard doesn't do enough.

"What the Dashboard does is list all the information linked directly to your name, but what it doesn't do is let you know and control the data directly tied to your computer's IP address, which is Google's black box and data mine," Simpson said in a press release. "Google isn't truly protecting privacy until it lets you control that information."

For more on Google's Dashboard:
- see this ComputerWorld.com article
- also see this New York Times article

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Going digital comes at a difficult time for everyone: Budgets are tighter, new technology is more expensive and consumers are more demanding of better service.

But there are distinct tends among the top municipalities. The survey found:

• 82 percent of respondents have webcasts--streamed audio and video, live and archived
• 74 percent have RSS feeds (up 21 percent over last year)
• 87 percent have city government body meeting minutes available online, archived and searchable
• 73 percent conduct online surveys or polls

The top municipalities by population:

• Corpus Christi, Texas (250,000 or more population)
• Norfolk, Va. (125,000 - 249,999 population)
• Santa Monica, Calif. (75,000 - 124,999 population)
• Flower Mound, Texas (30,000 - 74,999 population)

There are some interesting projects in every city. Corpus Christi, for example, has an automated water and gas meter-reader that generates an online billing statement. Santa Monica is working on a mobile device that citizens will be able to use to see if parking is available at their destination. And Flower Mound, Texas, operates numerous Facebook pages, several Twitter blogs, a YouTube channel, a Flickr page and a Nixle site to connect with its citizens.

For more on this year's top digital cities:
- see this Govtech.com article

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"It looks like these sites are growing revenues significantly faster than any other part of retail," JPMorgan retail analyst Brian Tunick tells Business Week. Tunick says sales are growing fourfold and fivefold a year in this segment and venture capital firms have begun placing bets in the space.

Whether you are selling hats or gadgets, services or tech advice, it's possible that the online market is the way for you to venture beyond tepid sales and weak bottom lines.

"We think the (retail) market is quite large," says Jeff Lieberman, a partner at Insight Venture Partners, which invested $10 million in members-only shopping site HauteLook in May.

It's not only a good lure for the bargain-hunting fashionistas, it's a new way of thinking about technology, not just as an enabler for your business but as the sales vehicle, too. It's estimated that private online sales are $1 billion a year. So why leave this new way of marketing goods to Gucci and other high-end merchants?

For more on private online sales sites:
- see this Business Week article

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To make the list, Gartner based its selections on the technologies' potential to disrupt IT or business, the demand for investing considerable dollars in a technology, as well as the risk for companies that adopt a particular technology late.

Eweek.com highlighted the top 10 technologies in a very neat slideshow explaining what's up and why.

Among those on the Gartner list:

• Cloud Computing will force IT giants such as Microsoft and IBM to compete in the cloud.
• Reshaping the data center: There's plenty of discussion about how to redesign the data center that is getting bigger all the time. Do you build more now or wait until you actually need it?
• Green IT: It's an idea whose time has come and can save you plenty of money if you do it right.
• Social computing is here but how do you use it effectively?

For more on Gartner's top 10 technologies for 2010:
- see this eWeek.com article

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Judi Hasson: With H1N1 on the horizon, what should businesses be doing to make sure their offices keep operating in the event of a pandemic?

Eric Bozich: In addition to the basic health care precautions, we're seeing a lot of interest in services that will allow employees to work securely and efficiently in the event they cannot physically be in the office due to H1N1. That quickly leads us to a discussion of Qwest Mobility because it provides that secure, reliable connection to the corporate network.   

JH: Do employees need to be trained to telework in the event of a pandemic?

EB: Employee training is absolutely key to ensuring an enterprise can keep functioning in the event of a major flu outbreak or natural disaster. Making sure your business can keep running-despite the unexpected requires solid disaster recovery and business continuity planning in advance of an actual incident. To survive a crisis successfully, planning and training are essential. 

JH: How can you make certain that an employee working from home has a secure system in place and is protected from cyberattacks?

EB: Today's world puts pressure on IT departments to maintain business continuity in the face of many challenges. Can you protect company information from unauthorized access? Can you enforce security and compliance with company policy wherever workers are? Can you actually increase productivity and reduce costs? With the right people, processes and technologies in place, the answer to all of these questions is "yes." 

JH: How do you keep information secure when an employee works from home?

EB: Earlier I touched on Qwest Mobility, which is a service that provides a very secure, reliable connection to the company network. It's a simple managed solution that not only enables secure mobile access to the corporate network, it allows for administrative updates and enables reporting to help monitor that workers are complying with company policies regardless of where they physically are.

JH: There are predictions that the Internet will get overwhelmed and bogged down in the event of a major telework endeavor to keep the office running if there is an H1N1 outbreak. Is there any way to avoid this?

EB: Qwest runs one of the world's autonomous networks. As a Tier One carrier, our network and technology people anticipate these types of events, and we are confident our network will more than keep pace.

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In what appears to be an interesting development in the wake of the latest hack, Apple is hiring a security manager for the iPhone platform. The advertisement for the position was first spotted by Network World, and the description goes like this, "lead a team focused on secure booting and installation of the operating system, cryptographic services, partitioning and hardening its internal security domains, and risk analysis of security threats."

Admittedly, it isn't known if this is a new position or a replacement for an existing employee. Of course, perhaps the previous one was made redundant... Regardless, it is clear that Apple isn't going to tolerate the continual breaking of its security, and it is doing whatever it can to eliminate the last of these security bugs from its sacrosanct iPhone platform.

How much longer will it be before Apple tightens security to a point where jailbreaking is no longer possible? Time will tell, but if the endless patches coming out of Microsoft for the Windows operating system are any indication, it probably won't be any time soon.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Network World

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According to Computerworld, three out of the six security patches were listed as "critical." Four of them resolve problems with versions of Windows earlier than Windows 7; the remaining two will patch Microsoft Word and Excel.

Of particular note is that none of next Tuesday's security updates will affect the newly released Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. This would appear to imply that whatever measures the Redmond-based company is using are succeeding in reducing the number of security bugs that gets introduced.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek
- check out this article at Computerworld

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This opens the door to various types of exploitation: From an attacker being able to harvest a user's personal photos and data, to the stealing of one's credentials if auto-login is enabled.

Facebook has since rectified this particular problem by disallowing access from other applications to the affected subdomain. MySpace, on the other hand, took issue with the severity of the problem. It argued that it would only have exposed information that was already public. In any event, MySpace has also rectified the particular trouble spot too.

Well, until the next one is discovered...

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld

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However, the same vulnerability was discovered by an independent security researcher, who promptly posted about it on an Internet Engineering Task Force mailing list. As you can imagine, that blew Pandora's Box wide open, prompting PhoneFactor to come forward with the details of its findings.

The vulnerability in SSL is particular crippling because it is a protocol weakness, and not the fault of a programmer who implemented a code library wrongly. In a nutshell, all encryption technology that relies on SSL is affected by the vulnerability, and is open to eventual exploitation. Basically, it is now possible for an attacker with the right tools to execute a man-in-the-middle attack to hijack a bona fide SSL session.

To underscore the severity, Steve Dispensa wrote in a statement: "All SSL libraries will need to be patched, and most client and server applications will, at a minimum, need to include new copies of SSL libraries in their products. Most users will eventually need to update any software that uses SSL."

You can check out their blog here for more information.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek

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While this must be good news to Microsoft executives, it seems that the company's initial expectations could have been even higher. Indeed, analyst with the NPD Group, Stephen Baker noted that while this was good, he "wouldn't call it great."

A tough economy together with reluctance on the part of retailers to give up on Windows XP or Vista resulted in poorer than expected performance, says Baker. Despite outselling Windows Vista, Windows 7 has only brought about an 82 percent revenue increase over its predecessor so far. This was attributed partly to steep discounts that were dished out during the pre-sale period for Windows 7.

Of course, it'll be a while yet before Windows 7 even achieves parity in terms of market share with Windows Vista. At the moment, a separate report by Net Applications revealed that Windows 7 has three percent of the PC market as of the beginning of November. In contrast, Microsoft currently commands a hefty 92.52 percent of the entire market.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at eWeek
- check out this article at Computerworld

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A proposed revision would put patent challenges in front of patent  judges instead of patent examiners. It would provide uniform standards for hearing appeals and a tight time frame for the procedure. Too complicated for you? Big technology companies argue that the proposed process would strengthen the patents that make it through. And it may be the single best way of speeding up ways to get patents approved in real time instead of taking years like it does right now.

The review would be "essential to maintaining high-quality patents because it allows the validity of questionable patents to be tested," said Horacio Gutierrez, deputy general counsel of Microsoft.

IBM says the process is "a low-cost alternative to litigation," but smaller companies and start-ups don't like it. Many small companies fear that rich businesses could attempt through the review to keep innovative products from hitting the market. "This may be catastrophic for a start-up or small inventor," said Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, the highly successful personal electric scooter.

A coalition of major technology companies, the Coalition for Patent Fairness, is also opposing changes in the legislation because it would "dilute in any way the efficacy of post-grant challenges."

What will happen? Our guess is that patent reform legislation will collapse once again and the lengthy process to get a patent and fend off challenges will continue indefinitely.

For more on patent reform:
- see this Wall Street Journal article

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The report surveyed 198 senior financial executives from around the world. It was no surprise that it found that companies remain under pressure to cut costs even as they emerge from the worst recession in decades. And companies look to IT as a way out of the recession, to improve efficiency and provide a competitive advantage, according to the survey. Nearly three-quarters of respondents believe that IT is absolutely essential to their competitive positioning as the economy returns to strength, the survey found.

There was other surprising news. More than half of the respondents said their companies remained committed to most IT projects approved before the downturn. Only 2 percent of respondents say their organizations are stopping IT projects without any expectation of restarting them.

Respondents had very specific ideas about the future, too. When asked what IT investments would prove most valuable as the economy improves, respondents cited improvements in administrative efficiencies as well as solutions that boost employee productivity. One key to their thinking: When deciding to move forward on a project, survey results indicate that finance is partial to projects that will produce a swift and positive return on investment.

Nearly two-thirds, 64 percent, said they are likely to consider how long it would take a project to realize ROI before making IT investments.

For more on the CFO and IT:
- see this channel.insider.com article
- see this press release

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The lawsuit is similar to ones filed against Intel in Asia and Europe. In May, the European Commission filed Intel a record $1.45 billion for antitrust violations. In the New York case, the charges claim that Intel pressured computer makers and retailers to pick the company's microprocessors instead of competing products from A.M.D.

"Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market," Cuomo said in a statement. "Intel's actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices."

The New York attorney general's suit is the first formal antitrust action against Intel by any government agency in the United States in more than a decade. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said the company will contest the suit. "Neither consumers, who have consistently benefited from lower prices and increased innovation, nor justice are being served by the decision to file a case now," he said. "Intel will defend itself."

For more on the lawsuit against Intel:
- see this New York Times article

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R&D certainly appears to be recession-proof. That rate of spending was less than in 2007 when R&D spending rose 10 percent. Nevertheless, the survey found that 70 percent of the companies intend to maintain or increase R&D outlays in 2009.

"The thing that surprised us was that R&D spending didn't actually drop," Barry Jaruzelski, a Booz partner, told the New York Times. "But innovation is a fundamental strategy for these companies to hold onto their markets and gain an edge on their competitors. So it's sort of an arms-race issue. They don't want to disarm, despite the short-term economics."

That doesn't mean that anything new will be coming from the high-tech sector anytime soon. It does means that the recession did not slow down the quest for new products and new ways to move ahead.

For more on high-tech R&D:
- see this New York Times article

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The numbers are still coming in, but 2009 saw explosive growth of social media, according to Nielsen Online.

Twitter registered more than 7 million unique visitors in the U.S. just in February and there are plenty more numbers to come. So what will social media look like in 2010? And if you are not onboard this train, you better get to the station really quickly.

A blog on Harvard Business Publishing sets the stage for 2010, giving you an idea of what to watch for and what is likely to be coming your way. It's going to be more popular, more mobile and more exclusive, according to a post by David Armano a member of the founding team at Dachis Group, an Austin-based consulting service delivering social business design services.

Here are his predictions for 2010:

• Social media begins to look less social as groups start to filter out the clutter.
• Corporations jump in as more companies recognize that social networking can serve customers more effectively and leverage cost savings.
• Social networks turn serious as business recognizes the importance of using internal and external networks.
• Your company will formalize a social media policy that includes how employees conduct themselves.
• Mobile becomes a social media lifeline especially for employees whose companies ban them from using social networks during the workday.
• Sharing no longer means email. There likely will be an increase in users to share with their networks what they used to do with email lists.

For more on the explosion of social media:
- check out this Harvard Business Publishing article

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Don't forget marketing benefits of social media

In a nutshell, Virtual Wi-Fi allows the single wireless card found in laptops to be virtualized, simultaneously connecting to an actual Wi-Fi access point while allowing other Wi-Fi devices to connect to it.

Alex Gizis, the CEO of Nomadio elaborated more to PC World, saying: "A year ago, Microsoft talked a lot about this as a big feature in Windows 7. But driver support didn't get finished. The low-level code is in there, but the driver-level stuff isn't. And there's no app or setting in Windows to turn it on."

I have already downloaded the Connectify beta application, which is currently available for free, though I did not have the opportunity to try it out yet. According to Gizis, the final version will be ready in about six weeks, and he will likely charge for it. The software sounds interesting to me, and at least one application of it comes to mind, such as sharing of a hotel room Wi-Fi access with other laptops as well as my iPod Touch.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at PC World

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Personally, I don't agree with counting an e-book as an application in the App Store. However, having purchased an iPod Touch myself recently in order to get access to more e-books from Amazon, I can attest to the fact that the iPhone platform is by far the best e-book reader in the form factor of a smartphone. As such, I am not against the assertion by Flurry that "the iPhone and iPod Touch are in a position to start grabbing market share from the Kindle"

Do you read e-books on the iPhone? What is your opinion on this?

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek
- check out this article at eWeek

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Andrea Lelli, a security analyst with Symantec Security Response, wrote that this new malware works by first logging into the mobile version of Facebook. It then moves on to check the notes section of the site for its "orders." Depending on what is found there; up to four different reactions will be triggered, which includes contacting a third party server for additional commands. 

Lelli took pains to stress that there are no Facebook exploits or flaws of any kind in Facebook. Indeed, this malware merely logs onto a Facebook account in order to use it as a central node to receive further orders.

Ultimately, Lelli concedes that the Trojan seems to represent a targeted attack. Personally, I reckon this technique of using a specific Facebook account is probably a fast way for its creator to quickly shut everything down by deleting the account.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Symantec Connect
- check out this article at CNET News

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This was used by others to carry out nefarious deeds such as launching denial-of-service attacks or placing prank calls that resulted in raids by heavily armed police teams.

He has authored a book titled "Hacking the Cable Modem," and hosts an online forum dedicated to this topic, Harris took scant measures to keep his illicit activities secret. Noted Bill Pollock, founder of No Starch Press that published his 2006 book, the question of whether uncapping a cable modem is illegal is "not clear."

Based on the grand jury indictment unsealed on Monday however, Harris could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail as well as a $250,000 fine. You can be sure that the various cable Internet providers in the United States and overseas will be watching this one closely.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at The Register

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Using his own cracking application--that can handle 9.36 billion keys per hour, Campbell calculated that it would cost a cool $1.5M to brute force a password that is 12 characters long. Campbell is working based on the assumption that the password will consist of just lower-case letters. A similar password with just 11 characters though, will cost just $60,000 worth of computer cycles to crack.

Throwing numbers and other symbols in the mix will obviously increase the cost, though Campbell told The Register that a short (eight character) password containing an additional 32 different characters will cost just $106,000 to crack. So the longer the length, the better it is.

What is more chilling perhaps, is the idea that criminals could already have access to a super computer-level of computing resources by harnessing the power of cloud computing. But won't it be too costly for them? Well, not if they throw some good old fashioned crime into the technological mix.

Campbell summed up the situation. "Using stolen credit cards, they [hackers] could create a super computer that would be faster potentially than what the three-letter agencies have and they wouldn't be paying for the CPU cycles."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at The Register

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But for a growing and increasingly vocal segment of the iPhone developer population, the problem isn't so much how Apple conducts the application approval process--it's that the process exists at all. Also last week, Facebook developer Joe Hewitt made a public vow to quit developing for the iPhone, blaming Apple's approval policies. "Time for me to try something new," Hewitt writes on his Twitter page. "I've handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I'm onto a new project." TechCrunch reached out to Hewitt to clarify his comments, and he said "My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple's policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer."

Hours later, Paul Kafasis--a developer with noted Mac software maker Rogue Amoeba--also turned his back on the iPhone platform after an updated version of the firm's Airfoil Speakers Touch app spent over three and a half months lingering in approval purgatory. "We wanted to ship a simple bug fix, and it took almost four months of slow replies, delays, and dithering by Apple," Kafasis writes on the Rogue Amoeba blog. "All the while, our buggy [version] was still available. There's no other word for that but ‘broken.'" Kafasis adds the firm has no additional plans for iPhone applications, and updates for existing apps will be rare: "The iPhone platform had great promise, but that promise is not enough, so we're focusing on the Mac." The reader comments following Kafasis' post make it clear that the snafus facing Rogue Amoeba are still widespread more than a year after the App Store first opened for business--Hewitt and Kafasis may be among the highest-profile developers to sever ties with the iPhone, but it's obvious they're not going to be the last. -Jason

While webOS 1.3.1 does not include any new applications, it does add Yahoo Contact and Calendar sync as well as improved messaging functionality. (The complete list of changes is here.) Perhaps most notable, it does not restore access to Apple's iTunes digital media storefront--Palm and Apple have gone around and around with competing software updates to either enable or disable webOS-based devices from synchronizing with iTunes, and in September, non-profit industry standards group the USB Implementers Forum sided with Apple in response to a complaint filed by Palm alleging that Apple restrains trade by blocking the Palm Pre from iTunes access.

For more on Mojo 1.3.1:
- read this Palm Developer Network Blog entry

For more on the Android 2.0 source code:
- read this MobileCrunch article

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Last week, Microsoft introduced a series of Windows Marketplace for Mobile storefront, most notably introducing new desktop-based shopping options enabling consumers to purchase applications via PC. Users can now browse, buy and download applications from the new Windows Marketplace for Mobile website, which wirelessly delivers WinMo apps to the customer's phone--installation follows the next time the Windows Marketplace client runs on the device.

In addition, Microsoft's Senior Director for Mobile Platform Services Product Management Todd Brix writes on the Windows Mobile Developer Blog that the WinMo Marketplace developer portal includes a number of enhancements enabling simpler uploading of images, improved insight into account status and other refinements, all based on feedback from developers. Brix adds the update also boosts anti-piracy protection.

For more on Windows Marketplace's WinMo 6.0 and 6.1 support:
- read this Windows Phone Blog entry

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Nickel Buddy's game Fierce Towers claimed the runner-up prize package valued at more than $25,000, and Kik, which lets users find, manage and play music files stored on BlackBerry devices, won honorable mention and $5,000. "We're looking for companies that are innovating on the BlackBerry platform," Talbot said. "We believe the smartphone is your computer, your wallet and your lifestyle device, and we're looking for apps that bring those things to life."

BlackBerry Partners Fund--a $150 million venture capital fund created in mid-2008 to invest in applications and services for the BlackBerry OS as well as rival mobile platforms--announced the 2009 BlackBerry Developers Challenge in May of this year, calling for compelling mobile products and services as well as clearly defined value propositions, viable business models and entrepreneurs with the skills to execute their concepts. While the contest was open to all working BlackBerry apps, submissions were required to originate from startups--firms receiving more than $1 million in outside investment were ineligible to compete. Sixteen finalists competed for the grand prize.

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The BlackBerry Academic Program provides an outline of the content for each course, learning materials including student textbooks and instructor copy, student lab manuals, instructor guides and an academic product suite covering hardware and software. Course content can be offered over the length of a semester, or as individual modules for instructors to integrate into their existing information technology curriculum. RIM adds that the curriculum was developed in collaboration with academic professionals and has been in pilot for over a year--so far, more than 500 students have already taken courses based on the BlackBerry Academic Program, with several universities in the U.S. and Canada now incorporating course content into their lesson plans.

Research In Motion's director of developer relations Mike Kirkup said Monday that the global BlackBerry development community continues to grow rapidly--there are now more than 200,000 registered BlackBerry developers worldwide, and together they've downloaded more than 1.6 million developer tools. Kirkup said the BlackBerry Academic Program furthers RIM's efforts to deliver programs and tools optimized for fledgling developers, with an emphasis on efforts tailored for specific geographic regions, adding the number of BlackBerry coders in the Asia-Pacific region has grown almost 200 percent in the last year alone.

Berrymad's Berryminder, which allows users to set alerts based on their GPS-determined location, is the winner of Apply Your Ideas' People's Choice category, earning $25,000 along with additional prizes. Apply Your Ideas also named the Kedlin Company's anti-spam app Call Control Lite winner of the Save Time category, with Movela's craigslist mobile taking top honors in the Enhance Living category and  Vaayoo's eponymous social networking app winning in the Connect category. Each individual category winner takes home $10,000.

For more on the Apply Your Ideas results:
- watch this slideshow of winners
- check out the Verizon Developer Community website

"We've been beavering away on a lot of things these last couple of years," said RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie during his opening keynote Monday morning. "This is not about thousands of islands of applications. It's about deep, rich integration to enable transformative experiences. Our view is that we have an environment with tremendous possibilities for contextualization."

Chief among RIM's announcements: A new WebKit-based browser capable of full HTML rendering, scheduled to debut "not too far into 2010," Balsillie said. The new browser follows on the heels of RIM's August acquisition of WebKit solutions developer Torch Mobile, creator of the Iris web browser for mobile and embedded devices. RIM also promised a new services platform enabling developers to integrate mobile advertising efforts, payment options, geo-location awareness and push services for alerts and content updates, and added it plans to open some core APIs to enable Messenger and media player integration as well. "You said you wanted deeper native APIs, and we heard you," Balsillie said.

The announcements kept coming. Enhancements to the BlackBerry Application Platform include support for OpenGL ES to bolster development of 3D games and graphics, an upcoming Java GUI builder to accelerate development of user interfaces for BlackBerry apps, and a new BlackBerry Theme Studio to enable the creation of smartphone themes. In addition, developers can sell those themes via BlackBerry App World, which RIM said will introduce carrier billing and in-app payment options in 2010.

Adobe Systems president and CEO Shantanu Narayen joined Balsillie to announce creative professionals and developers can now use Adobe Flash Platform technology and Adobe Creative Suite content development and authoring tools to build BlackBerry apps. Future versions of Adobe Creative Suite starting with Adobe Creative Suite 5 will enable creation of BlackBerry-optimized graphic assets like image and video content from tools including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects--Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Device Central software will also support creation and testing of BlackBerryWidgets and web content. "Our customers tell us that innovation is taking place on smartphones," Narayen said.

While Narayen emphasized innovation, Balsillie time and again returned to the theme of transformation--transformative user experiences were the headline of his keynote, but the BlackBerry platform's transformation into a more expansive and more lucrative developer sandbox was the deeper message he conveyed. "You want new services and contextualization, and you want applications to interrelate with each other," he said. "We believe this is the promised land in mobility." -Jason

Specifically, the new platform, will let developers sign up and submit apps using a Web interface. Once the application is developed, a link is created which the developer can use to promote his application via Twitter, Facebook or email.  When a potential user clicks on the link, they will be taken to the application that is available for download.

Abbott said that the motivation behind this new platform, which will be available in December, is to help developers more easily transition from web development to mobile development. "We want to make apps easier to develop," he said.

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As reported by sister publication FierceWireless, Brodman said T-Mobile USA will offer four Android smartphones by the end of 2009, adding that number will double to eight in the first half of 2010. According to Brodman, the carrier expects smartphones will represent about 40 percent of its device sales during Q4--he said current Android subscribers consume 50 times more data than other customers, and about half of Android users visit Android Market every day. Other key metrics on T-Mobile's Android demographic:

• Eighty percent of Android users browse at least once a day, with two-thirds browsing numerous times per day
• Nearly half of the carrier's HTC myTouch 3G users customize their phone with applications
• More than 40 percent of Android users access social networking sites multiple times per day

For more on T-Mobile USA's Android outlook:
- read this PCWorld article

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New capabilities and enhancements for PayPal's Adaptive Payments APIs include currency conversion for international purchases, Pay Anyone (enabling financial and other institutions to allow customers to send money when logged in to their bank accounts, regardless of whether the customer has a PayPal account) and pre-approvals (giving developers the flexibility to create reusable payments agreements between buyers and sellers). A new developer portal, X.com, promises all the information developers need to create applications built with PayPal X. PayPal now boasts more than 78 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies worldwide.

For more on PayPal's new developer programs:
- read this release

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The Droid also brings with it the Android 2.0 SDK, which promises a host of enhancements for developers and users alike. The updated SDK--available for download here--introduces new APIs for sync and Bluetooth. "Using the new sync, account manager and contacts APIs, you can write applications to enable users to sync their devices to various contact sources," writes Android SDK tech lead Xavier Ducrohet on the Android Developers Blog. "With the new Bluetooth API, you can now easily add peer-to-peer connectivity or gaming to your applications."

Major user additions to Android 2.0 include Quick Contact, which provides instant access to a contact's information and communication modes--for example, users can tap a photo and select whether to call, text or email the individual in question. Other applications like Email, Messaging and Calendar can also reveal the Quick Contact widget upon touching a contact photo or status icon. Android 2.0 additionally boasts support for Exchange, a combined inbox to browse email from multiple accounts in one page and search functionality for all saved SMS and MMS messages. The software upgrade also boosts camera functionality, introducing built-in flash support, digital zoom, scene mode and related visual effects. An improved keyboard promises to simplify text input and improve typing speed, while the framework's multi-touch support guarantees key presses aren't missed during two-finger typing sessions.

Perhaps the most significant browser enhancement in Android 2.0 arrives via support for HTML5, which enables browser-based applications to behave more like native apps. Speaking in February at Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra trumpeted HTML5 as one of the cornerstones of the modern, cutting-edge mobile browser. Gundotra also emphasized the value of application cache support for offline use and geolocation API support, both featured in Android 2.0 as well. The update also adds a refreshed UI with actionable browser URL bar, enabling users to directly tap the address bar for instant searches and navigation, as well as bookmarks with web page thumbnails and support for double-tap zoom.

Not all developers are eagerly awaiting the Droid's debut, however. Last week Google confirmed the launch of Google Maps Navigation (Beta), a free turn-by-turn navigation app premiering in conjunction with Android 2.0. According to Google, the mobile app boasts all the familiar bells and whistles of premium GPS-based navigation systems, like 3D views, voice guidance and automatic re-routing, but was built to take advantage of smartphones' constant connection to the web, enabling features like real-time traffic views, street and satellite views, updated maps and business data. "Obviously, we like the price of free and consumers like that as well," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said during a preview of the service, adding the company can figure out how to make money from the product later. If the application is a hit, rival navigation software developers earning revenue via subscription-based solutions may find themselves forced to devise new business models as well. -Jason

To enter Trackappalooza, developers must sign-up for a Motally account and integrate the Motally API into their live applications by Dec. 15--tracking metrics from the month of Jan. 2010 will determine the winners. To register, click here.

For more on Trackappalooza:
- read this release

In August, Research In Motion acquired WebKit solutions developer Torch Mobile, creator of the Iris web browser for mobile and embedded devices. Torch announced the acquisition on its website: "Our team of developers will join RIM's global organization and will now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry platform... As part of RIM, these developers will continue to be active participants in the WebKit development community." WebKit already powers mobile browsers on competing device platforms including the iPhone, Symbian S60 and Android.

For more on RIM's WebKit developer search:
- read this Engadget article

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Although Pinch Media's findings indicate that premium App Store downloads average $12,100 in revenue ($8,500 net to the developer), the firm is quick to point out that the arithmetic can be misleading because the most popular applications generate a very disproportionate percentage of sales. Pinch notes that a small segment of developers earn substantially more than $8.500 per app, and most do far worse. Pinch data also indicates that the average 99-cent iPhone app is not downloaded significantly more often than the average $4.99 app--in fact, its research suggest that the relatively strong sales performance of apps priced at $4.99 is an indicator of their quality.

For more on the iPhone app revenue projections:
- read this Pinch Media blog entry

Qualcomm Innovation Center brings together a dedicated group of engineers under Chandhok's leadership. The QuIC team will focus on open-source initiatives including Linux and Webkit as well as operating systems like Symbian and rival Android.

A total of five stores--Nokia's Ovi Store, Samsung Applications Store, AT&T's MEdia Mall, China Mobile's Mobile Market and Sony Ericsson's PlayNow arena--support Symbian Horizon; the directory is live in beta, and developers can submit their Symbian-signed apps for inclusion free of charge. In the months ahead, the Symbian Foundation will revise the submission process, offering developers the option of automatically adding their apps to the Horizon directory. In addition, developers will be able to register online and edit their application and developer profiles, providing both stores and consumers with complete information about their products. The Symbian Foundation adds that it will begin a comprehensive program targeted at processing thousands of applications in the year to come. It also will seek input on options for funding the program.

"The world doesn't need yet another app store," said Symbian Foundation director Lee Williams during his opening keynote address Tuesday morning. "We're here to help developers with promotion, translation, and channel and store access. This is a real opportunity for them to get to market."

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Nokia says it's now approving 500 new content items for distribution each week. But the company isn't disclosing the number of Ovi Store downloads or the total number of content units available to consumers, so it's impossible to gauge just how the store is faring so far. The company did respond to criticisms about the Ovi Store user experience: "We realize there are many things to make better in Ovi Store," said Nokia director of platform marketing Aapo Bovellan. "We wanted to create something that works across multiple devices and platforms, meaning we run into different obstacles than the other guys."

And while Nokia's presentations Monday heavily emphasized Ovi Store's geographic scale, stating that content is now available in six different languages, the social half of the effort's promised Social Location recommendation model was barely mentioned. I asked Perry about Social Location's evolution in an interview following the press event: "We're still shoring things up," he admitted. "Next year, our goal is to have a cohesive relevancy experience. When you're dealing with consumers' purchasing habits, you can't just flip a switch to make everything happen. But we are seeing user trends emerge as more applications get in to the store."

Nokia also will strive to elevate Ovi Store's awareness among consumers and developers alike. Marketing head Srinkanth Raju said the company plans to feature third-party applications in forthcoming promotional efforts, and is training retail representatives to walk customers through apps in-store--in addition, Perry said developers can expect "more outbound marketing and evangelism" as Nokia looks to woo programmers who've turned their energies elsewhere, with an emphasis on the company's "total addressable market." Nokia won't have trouble convincing developers it's bigger than its rivals--it's convincing developers that it's better that poses the real challenge. -Jason

For more Symbian news and live coverage from the Symbian Exchange and Exposition 2009 conference in London, check back with the FierceDeveloper website throughout the week.

For more on the Symbian microkernel release:
- read this release

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For more on QuIC:
- read this release

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Calling the build "faster, sleeker, more touch-friendly and in my opinion, a much better upgrade than 6.5," respected Microsoft blogger Long Zheng adds "With all these changes and more already implemented and polished, I have to wonder why faced with inevitable criticism that WM6.5 is not enough of an improvement Microsoft didn't hold off until all these changes were implemented for the official Windows Phone relaunch...Until Windows Mobile 7, this is probably as good as it's going to get on Windows Mobile 6."

For more on Windows Mobile 6.5.1:
- read this Computerworld article

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BlackBerry OS 5.0 will also include:

• New user interface APIs promising easier UI creation and advanced customization. New features include date/time picker, file picker, and location picker and layout utility managers--mew customization APIs enable developers to install and use custom fonts, apply screen transitions, customize menu look and feel, and add submenus.
• New networking APIs, such as network API and hotspot API, to simplify making network connections.
• A new SQLite API enabling Java developers to manage their application data in a persistent database. RIM says that along with support for SQLite with the enhanced BlackBerry Browser, developers can now create applications that enable access and management of data stored on the smartphone both in and out of network coverage zones.
• Further enhancements to the BlackBerry Browser to improve website rendering and deliver faster JavaScript and CSS.

RIM adds that an update to its BlackBerry Java Development Environment v5.0 beta 4 release is now available here. The manufacturer said BlackBerry OS 5.0 is expected to be available on devices including the BlackBerry Bold 9000, BlackBerry Tour 9630 and BlackBerry Curve 8900, 8350i and 8520 within the next few months.

For more on BlackBerry OS 5.0:
- read this release

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But looking beyond 2009, research firm Gartner forecasts that by 2012, Android--which currently represents less than 2 percent of all smartphones sold--will grow to 18 percent of worldwide smartphone OS market share, accounting for 94.5 million of the expected 525 million smartphones sold three years from now. While the iPhone will generate sales of 71.5 million in 2012, its overall market share is only expected to grow to 13.6 percent between now and then--Symbian, with an anticipated 196.5 million units sold in 2012, will represent 37.4 percent of worldwide OS market share, while BlackBerry, at 73 million units sold, will edge past iPhone to account for 13.9 percent. (The big loser in Gartner's forecast: Windows Mobile, which will generate anticipated 2012 sales of 47.7 million--just 9 percent of the global market.)

Gartner isn't the only firm predicting the iPhone's dominance will wane in the years ahead--according to Ovum, while the App Store is presently responsible for about 70 percent of the total application download market, its share will decline to less than 20 percent by 2014. Ovum expects the total number of application downloads (including both free and premium applications) will grow from 491 million worldwide in 2008 to 18.7 billion in 2014, a CAGR of 83 percent across the forecast period. Ovum estimates that the global market will grow by a CAGR of 153 percent between 2008 and 2011 before dropping to around 33 percent between 2011 and 2014, a decline blamed on the emergence of browser-based services and other substitutes for app downloads. Whether you agree or disagree with the Gartner and Ovum forecasts, it does seem like the smartphone market is about to enter a distinct new phase in its evolution, galvanized by a groundswell of operator and manufacturer support for Android--no one's suggesting the last few years have been boring, but it looks like things are about to get even more interesting. -Jason

"We've seen interest across a wide range of areas for which the developer community wants to use Wolfram|Alpha--researching cancer through computational biology, augmenting web and meta-web search with computed knowledge, enriching online journalism with interactive content, building artificial intelligence systems on our domain expertise, leveraging our data analysis for decision support, optimizing renewable-energy efficiency, and even determining the optimal temperature for draft beer based on the current weather conditions.," writes Wolfram Research technical development specialist Schoeller Porter on the firm's blog. "Clearly, a straightforward API that enables applications to access advanced computations based on trusted information and backed up by a supercomputer-class infrastructure invites developers to explore ideas that were not otherwise possible."

In related news, Wolfram issued a WolframAlpha application optimized for Apple's iPhone--the app, priced at a whopping $49.99, promises to replace virtually any kind of calculator or reference book, delivering expert-level answers to questions complete with dynamically-generated visualizations and tables. The app includes a native iPhone interface with a special notation keyboard, customized output, editable history and integration with maps and other services.

For more on the WolframAlpha API:
- read this blog entry

Ballmer also responded to comments by Laura Fitton, founder of the Twitter application storefront oneforty.com, who said very few developers are creating WinMo-based Twitter apps. Ballmer said Microsoft realizes it is engaged in a lengthy campaign to lure more developers into writing apps for Windows Mobile.

For more on Ballmer's comments:
- read this Boston Globe article

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Google also used the earnings call to promote the growth of its mobile search services. "On a quarter over quarter basis, mobile searches grew 30 percent on Google," CFO Patrick Pichette said. "It tells you something about the mobile space, the smartphones, and how they are transformative. They are basically transforming how people live on a mobile basis. If we move forward the adoption of these mobile phones by lowering the cost because it is open source, think of how many searches [will follow]."

For more on Google's Android boasts:
- read this TechCrunch article

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According to Wood, he is leaving Symbian to explore "alternative career options and future scenarios," citing his recent 50th birthday as fuel behind his desire to pursue new paths. Among the subjects he hopes to tackle: The future of energy, accelerated climate change, artificial intelligence, life extension, nanotechnology and smart robotics. "I need to open up time for wide-ranging discussions with numerous interesting individuals and companies, both inside and outside the smartphone industry," Wood says. "I look forward to finding a new way to balance my passionate support for Symbian and smartphones with my concern for the future of technology." Wood adds that he's presently handing over his Symbian Foundation responsibilities to colleagues and partners.

For more on Wood's exit:
- read his blog entry

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The menus, the categories, the product descriptions, the terms pages, the buy links all need to be beautiful. They need to be drop-dead gorgeous, fully optimized to the phone, colorful, clear, pristine. They need to be consistent and well-engineered, and they need to actually load up on a phone without crashing. Apparently I'm asking too much because what I get is least-common-denominator, white background, small print, asterisks, goofy looking buttons, input boxes that don't fit, broken links, teeny tiny icons, circular links, and giant warning messages that remind users that this whole thing is really not a good idea.

It's as if everyone runs out of R&D budget at exactly the same place.

Billing. I want to know, in advance, if my prospect has a billing relationship with the storefront before I send my prospect into that store. I can do that with carrier storefronts, because if I send a Sprint Nextel customer to the Sprint vending machine, I know they have a billing relationship. But when it comes to other stores, I have no idea what the experience will be. Imagine a marketing campaign where I've hooked a BlackBerry user on my product. All they need to do is buy it. So where am I going to send that buyer to fulfill their purchase? Where can I send them that is the least likely to end badly? I did all the work, I found the buyer, all I want to do is take their money and deliver the files.

If the storefronts don't solve that problem, why wouldn't all developers simply make their own storefronts and be done with it? One could argue successfully that if a developer has secured a prospect through their own discovery mechanism, they shouldn't refer that customer to any other storefront than their own. You may as well take your own chances. If the store is going to prompt for a credit card, would they have any more luck doing it than the developer would?

Demographics. We know almost nothing about our customers. Simple things, like whether they are male or female, or their age, household income or geography. What other products do they buy and how much money do they spend annually on mobile content purchases? What kind of phone do they have? How often do they switch phones? Are they on a family plan?

I understand that there are privacy issues around identifying each individual customer's data, but I can't believe that this data can't be provided in some kind of aggregate form. But we get nothing, so we have no idea how to adapt our products or our marketing messages to attract new buyers. Are they price sensitive? Do they respond to special offers and incentives? Are they premium or budget-minded?

We don't even know what the makeup is of the buyers within an entire storefront. If we were selling to Wal-Mart they'd tell us absolutely everything. We'd be swimming in data and it would be our responsibility to know how to use it. But in mobile, where everything about the transaction is digital, ironically we know absolutely nothing at all.

Administration. The administration of these storefronts is incredibly painful. It's a combination of half-working websites, poorly implemented upload procedures, and lots of dead-ends and minefields. In other words, whatever you do, don't touch THAT button, because if you do, well, it will be bad, it will be really really bad. In fact, the last guy who pushed that button, well, you don't even wanna know.

It's so bad, that there are actually companies who make their living from pressing the buttons for you, because the administration of files, screenshots, metadata, previews and everything else is such a nightmare. And since everyone is left to decipher this on their own the result is a storefront that is frankly a vast, digital, disparate mobile content flea market. You think any two company's preview files actually look alike? Are the product descriptions perfectly honed to produce maximum impact and provide the end-user endless assurances that this is all money well-spent? No, it's all self-serve. Each developer left on their own to produce a completely random set of product adventures. The entire mobile industry would double their sales if someone would just pick up the phone and call Hammacher-Schlemmer and beg them to help us.

Let me reiterate this point for emphasis. It is the operator of the storefront, not the developer, who should decide exactly what the customer sees from discovery through to purchase. The screenshots, the descriptions, the feature sets, pricing--everything, should be completely managed by the storefront staff. And if anything is required from the developer, it should be extremely well-specified and carefully reviewed before being accepted.

Marketing support. We need the implementation of every trick in the book for marketing. I mentioned just one of them above, which is unlimited affiliate ID codes that are tracked all the way back to the purchase reports. How about dynamic A-B testing on the marketing pages that lead up to a sale? Show half of the users version 1, the other half version 2, and in 3 hours you'll know which copy is best and you can optimize sales. Bring the request for A-B testing to any storefront operator and you'll get a very blank stare.

We also need to be able to do marketing within the store, whether that means buying a digital "endcap" or some simple banners across the top. Problem is, we never know where the sales came from, so we have no idea if the banner ads sold the product or the categorization sold the product. Unless, of course, you're willing to do some voodoo, which every storefront has, and which will cost you several conference calls and the double-entry of all your data into the system.

We need a co-op marketing program. We'll promote our product and remind users that they can buy it in your store. So all we need is a clean, simple, deeplink into your store (from our banner) that will issue a quick, seamless, painless transaction. Can someone please give us a deeplink that doesn't suck? That would be the one that includes an affiliate ID, a beautiful marketing page, a one-click purchase and immediate reporting so I can adjust my marketing campaign parameters this evening. You see, if I fish in Pond A where my cost-per-add is $3, and Pond B yields a CPA of $2, it's really important to know that Pond A users are buying subscriptions while Pond B users are opting for the free trial. That tells me to fish in Pond A, even though it's more expensive. The deal is, I need to make that decision in a couple of hours before my client runs out of marketing money, and I can't do that if I get reporting 3 days later, without affiliate ID tracking.

One great store. Even though the mobile content space is saturated with storefronts from all directions (carriers, manufacturers, independents, self-managed), I still believe there is an opportunity for a single strong player to swoop in and completely devastate the existing landscape of retailers. The reason I say that is because after all this time, and all these initiatives, no one store really does it right. No single mobile storefront is really great. "Insanely great," as Jobs would say. It's still there, for the taking, the whole thing, if someone could just get it right.

In the meantime, I'm going to go log into my admin console and see if I can download some quarterly Excel reports...

Konny Zsigo is a 20-year veteran of the wireless data industry. His company, the WirelessDeveloper Agency, creates and executes mobile Web marketing campaigns to directly increase content sales and drive users to action. WDA also supports mobile publishers with North American distribution, licensing and production of mobile content (video, games, apps, ringtones, wallpapers, themes and more).

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There are at least three different groups of companies creating storefronts. Not all of them, incidentally, were created in response to Apple's success. In fact, many of them have been around a lot longer, which means they had a huge head start and should be amazing right now, but they're not. There are carrier storefronts, independent storefronts and handset manufacturer storefronts. Dozens of them in the U.S. marketplace alone selling mobile games, apps, ringtones, wallpapers, videos and so on. And yet, it seems with all that choice we really don't have very much choice at all. Each of them has a limitation, or issue, or some big glaring problem that prevents it from succeeding in a way that all of us need them to.

Reporting. Probably my biggest single complaint is reporting. The content we're selling is digital, the storefront is digital, the transaction is digital, yet the reporting is ... manual? The first thing about reporting is that it needs to be on-demand, and it needs to be instant. If something is sold, we should know immediately, not at the end of the month, or the end of the quarter, or 30 days after the end of the quarter. Repeatedly, I am told that the reason I can't get reporting immediately is that it is un-reconciled and might be wrong. Well duh. Maybe the user's credit card won't clear, or they won't pay their bill, or maybe they slipped through the cracks and made an illegal purchase. We know all this and we know it's not accounting grade detail, but it's still very valuable and we can't wait even three days to get it.

We also need to know a lot more about how and when the sale was made. If a report tells us that 265 copies of a specific mobile game were sold yesterday, there are many unanswered questions. First, what category were the game sales made from? If the sales came from the "What's New" category vs. the "Board Games" category, that's vitally important. Sounds simple, but we don't even know what the word "yesterday" means. What time zone is "yesterday?" At what time of day were the sales made?

We also need to know a whole lot more about the person that made the purchase. For example, has this person ever bought mobile content before, or are we responsible for their "first time purchase?" What else were they looking at before they decided to buy my product?

When we run marketing campaigns, some stores allow us to pass in an affiliate ID code of some kind. Of course, we want an unlimited number of IDs that we can trace all the way back to the banner ad that produced the purchase. Do you think we can get that? Heck no...

Instead, in many cases we have to ask for an affiliate code, and getting one is a big deal. And that's ONE code. I want a million codes!! Do you know what I can do with one lousy code? All I can do is tell you that a person made a purchase from one of multiple simultaneous campaigns, but not which one. So that means I have no idea which marketing campaign is effectively converting customers. Useless?

And I also have a beef about how I get the reporting. Most of our reporting comes in Excel spreadsheets produced somewhere by little elfkins that can't always add. It's true, I have gotten many royalty statements in Excel that did NOT add up. The "total" column isn't a formula, if you know what I mean. I don't even want an Excel spreadsheet! I want XML transactions, row by row, with all the detail in full glory so that my system can interpret the results (don't get me wrong, your graphs are pretty...)

A decent buy-page. I am astonished at the poor quality of the end-user experience on mobile storefronts. Being in the business as long as I have disqualifies me as an objective test subject, but sometimes even I get confused. At what exact point in the purchase process have I committed myself to a purchase? Will the real buy button please light up!...Continued

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Adobe Flash group product marketing manager Adrian Ludwig took exception to Baker's summation: "I don't think 'end-around' is accurate," he said. "Flash developers want their content available through the browser, and we're working with Apple to see what we need to do as a software company, and as developers, to make that possible." However, Ludwig declined to comment when asked whether Adobe had informed Apple that a series of applications already submitted for App Store approval were built with a preliminary version of Flash Pro CS5, and not Apple's own iPhone development environment.

Adobe has long aspired to bring Flash to the iPhone--this summer, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch told The Wall Street Journal that the software firm has assigned engineering teams to all major smartphone operating systems, but its absence from the iPhone platform had little to do to with technological challenges: "We need to have Apple's agreement before we can do it," Lynch said. In March 2008, Apple CEO Steve Jobs infamously contended the iPhone requires a media player more robust than the existing Flash mobile solution, and has not softened his stance over the year and a half to follow. Developers indicate that Adobe's latest move will do little to improve its relationship with Apple, noting iPhones still won't be able to successfully download the majority of web pages heavy on Flash-based graphics.

"Adobe's not putting Flash into the iPhone, no matter how hard you try to read between the lines," Hottrix CEO Steve Sheraton told The Wall Street Journal, adding "If it sounds too flashy to be true, it probably is." Pangea Software CEO Brian Greenstone was even more critical of Adobe's approach, telling the Journal "it just means we'll have a flurry of C-grade apps suddenly appearing on the App Store." It's far too early to pass such a sweeping judgment on the quality of these new Flash Professional CS50-based apps, but it does look like they will be coming in droves. "Whether the iPhone can bolster a good enough performance to do intensive mobile Flash games, we are unsure of," John Cooney, head of development at Flash gaming firm Armor Games, said to Wired. "But if it can, it's going to open up doors for several Flash game developers, including myself personally, to become iPhone developers." -Jason

Other Handango winners included e-Mobile Software Inc (for BlackBerry Developer of the Year), Lonely Cat Games (for Symbian Developer of the Year), Lonely Cat Games (which won Symbian App of the Year for LCG Jukebox) and TetherBerry (whose eponymous application took home BlackBerry App of the Year). For the first time, consumers were invited to participate in voting across categories including Developer of the Year, Best Business App, Best Social/Messaging App and 2009 Groundbreaker. For the complete list of winners, click here.

For more on the 2009 Handango Champion Awards:
- read this release

Related articles:
BlackBerry displaces Windows Mobile atop Handango Yardstick
Mobile games, BlackBerry apps dominate Handango Yardstick
Entertainment tops Handango Yardstick

In August, the LiMo Foundation announced a new round of LiMo-compliant mobile Linux handsets from NEC and Panasonic Mobile Communications, bringing its total number of approved devices to 42--the largest number of commercially available mobile handsets produced by any global collaborative development platform organization, the group adds, and far greater than the number of Android smartphones currently available. The LiMo Foundation's ranks total close to 60 members.

For more on Motorola turning away from LiMo:
- read this InformationWeek article

Related articles:
LiMo Foundation announces platform updates
Verizon Wireless spurns Android for LiMo
LiMo Foundation unveils phones, adds members

In related Android news, the AndroidGuys website reports developers may now market their Android Market applications by targeting specific operators' subscribers as well as particular geographic regions." For example, if you are showing your app in the United States, you can now choose among Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless," reads a recent Google mail sent to Android programmers. "If your apps are intended for users of specific carriers, please go to the Android Market developer website at http://market.android.com/publish (in the Publishing Options section under Locations) and target your applications to those carriers accordingly."

For more on the Android 1.6 SDK upgrades:
- check out the Android Developers Blog 

Related articles:
Google slaps Android developer with cease-and-desist letter 
Google releases Android 1.6 SDK

New phones, seller tools improve Android Market's fortunes

Google releases Donut update for Android developers

The iPhone SDK update is similarly low-key. Most notably, instruments can now profile iPhone and iPod touch applications on a device via WiFi connection--also, the iPhone Development grouping now collects crash logs, install bundles and provisioning profiles in a single location. In addition, iPhone OS 3.1 Simulator uses frameworks more closely matching the device. A version is available for developers running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Developers can download iPhone SDK 3.1.2 here.

For more on iPhone SDK 3.1.2:
- read this iPhone Blog article

Related articles:
Apple issues iPhone OS 3.1 beta
Analyst says Snow Leopard could extend iPhone battery life

BlackBerry Widgets can be distributed over-the-air, via BlackBerry App World or through BlackBerry Enterprise Server to smartphones running BlackBerry OS 5.0, which will include an enhanced BlackBerry Browser with support for Gears, SQLite and the new BlackBerry Widget APIs.

For more on the BlackBerry Widget SDK:
- read this release

Related articles:
BlackBerry browser adding Flash and Silverlight support?
RIM unveils new BlackBerry app development tools

Source: Daniel Bouie via YouTube

While Microsoft will launch Windows Marketplace for Mobile in conjunction with its first Windows Mobile 6.5 devices, the company is looking forward by looking backward: "We've also discussed following this launch with an update that will include support for Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 by the end of the year," Brix writes. "More specifically, we're targeting November for phase two. In addition, this second phase will bring the PC based catalog and shopping experience, user generated app reviews, advanced key-based anti-piracy protection and other enhancements that expand your business opportunity and make it easier for a larger number of customers to find and buy your application."

WinMo 6.5 arrives amidst grave doubts about the future of the Windows Mobile platform. Following August's announcement that longtime mobile adversaries Microsoft and Nokia will partner to integrate Microsoft Office software into upcoming Symbian smartphones, research firm Gartner was ready to stick a fork in Windows Mobile--"Despite loud protestations that Microsoft is deeply committed to WinMo, they wouldn't have needed this alliance with Nokia if WinMo were the leading smartphone operating system," Gartner analyst Nick Jones wrote. "I worry that WM7 could even be the last throw of the dice. Imagine you're [Microsoft CEO] Steve Ballmer, and in two years time WinMo was still 4th in smartphone market share. How much longer would you keep throwing money at it?"

But in a research note issued last week, market analysis firm iSuppli maintains Windows Mobile not only will survive, it will thrive, tripling in smartphone usage between 2009 and 2013 to emerge as the second most popular OS in the global market, behind only Symbian. iSuppli forecasts that 67.9 million smartphones will run on WinMo in 2013 (up from 27.7 million in 2009), translating to a 15.3 percent share of the global market behind Symbian's projected 47.6 percent. iSuppli maintains WinMo can rebound because it's part of a complete infrastructure offering: "The battle over smartphone software has spread beyond the operating systems," argues iSuppli senior wireless communications analyst Tina Teng. "To win in today's environment, a company needs not only an operating system but also device support, an application store, a broad portfolio of applications and support from the developer community. While Windows Mobile is losing some share to competitors in 2009, most of the alternatives cannot match Microsoft's complete suite of offerings."

Teng also contends that Palm and Motorola's respective focus on webOS and Android will have little impact on WinMo's fortunes: "Palm never used Microsoft for all of its smartphone operating system needs, so it never represented a large amount of business... Furthermore, it was known that Palm was working on its own smartphone operating system for the Pre. As for Motorola, the company's shipments and market share in the mobile handset business have been declining in recent years, making it a less significant player." iSuppli believes the losses are offset by Microsoft's partnership with LG, which has pledged to produce 50 Windows Mobile handset models.

Even iSuppli admits that WinMo is its own worst enemy, charitably noting "the Windows Mobile user interface looks poor compared to some of its slicker competitors--particularly Google's Android and Apple's iPhone." So the iSuppli forecast pins its hopes on the long-in-incubation Windows Mobile 7 and its promise of a revamped operating system, an enhanced user interface and web browser and multi-touch controls. That's a lot riding on an OS that's still largely an enigma--although iSuppli's bet on Windows Mobile 7 is nothing compared to the wager Microsoft is making, of course. -Jason

In related news, Verizon Wireless announced the creation of the 4G Venture Forum, a new initiative promising to bring together financial investment, developmental incubation and market validation for products and services earmarked for 4G networks.  The 4GVF brings Verizon together with network infrastructure providers Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as well as venture funds including Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, Charles River Partners, New Venture Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners  and Redpoint Ventures.  Verizon reports that participants have identified up to $1.3 billion as available for 4GVF development; participating venture capital firms presently have more than $9 billion under management.

For more on Verizon's 4G efforts:
- read this release

Related articles:
Verizon Developer Community membership soars in first month
Verizon kicks off Apply Your Ideas developer contest

Adobe has long aspired to bring Flash to the iPhone--this summer, Lynch told The Wall Street Journal that the software firm has assigned engineering teams to all major smartphones, but its absence from the iPhone platform had little to do to with technological challenges: "We need to have Apple's agreement before we can do it," Lynch said. In March 2008, Apple CEO Steve Jobs contended the iPhone requires a media player more robust than the existing Flash mobile solution.

In related Adobe news, the company announced the introduction of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones, smartbooks, netbooks, PCs and other web-connected devices, promising a consistent runtime release enabling uncompromised web browsing across multiple platforms. According to Adobe, the browser-based Flash Player 10.1 runtime uses the productive web model of the Flash Platform to enable designers and developers to reuse code and assets, effectively slashing the cost of creating, testing and deploying content across different operating systems and browsers. In addition, it leverages the power of the Graphics Processing Unit to accelerate video and graphics while conserving battery life and minimizing resource utilization. Flash Player 10.1 also boasts support for smartphone features including multi-touch, gestures, mobile input models, accelerometer and screen orientation.

Public developer betas of the browser-based runtime optimized for Windows Mobile, Palm's webOS and desktop operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux will surface later this year--public betas for Android and Symbian will follow in early 2010. In addition, Adobe and Research In Motion announced a joint collaboration to bring Flash Player to BlackBerry smartphones, while Google will join close to 50 other industry players in the Adobe-led Open Screen Project initiative.

For more on Flash for iPhone:
- read this release

Neither of these partners may have the funds for such a deal, however. Clearwire has just raised more than $1.5 billion in funding; but that's less than half of what it needs for its own network build-out through 2013, according to analysts. MetroPCS and Leap are still small companies, struggling to keep growing amidst rising competition. MetroPCS's subscriber additions in the third quarter were less than a third of what they were a year ago.

Yes, it is possible that all these struggling, smaller competitors will decide to band together and to fund one network, to be used by all -- say, Clearwire's. Most of them address a different market segment, so they won't compete with each other too much: T-Mobile goes after the hip, young crowd (though it's also pursuing prepaid customers). Clearwire offers mobile broadband services for laptops. MetroPCS and Leap have made their names on prepaid wireless plans.

But I would argue that what T-Mobile USA needs is to be paired up with a cash-rich, well-to-do giant, instead. After all, you put a bunch of struggling companies together, and you often end up with a large struggling company.

It seems to me that DT should, instead, look in a different direction -- to AT&T, for example. AT&T is healthy and has the funds to help T-Mobile out. It also currently uses the same type of networking equipment as T-Mobile, and could help T-Mobile migrate to next-generation technology more smoothly. While such an alliance could, potentially, raise the anti-trust flag, a deal could, perhaps, be structured in such a way as to overcome such concerns.

In its Nov. 19 earnings report, Dell said sales fell 15% to $12.9 billion. Net income fell by 54% to $337 million, or 23 cents per share after excluding certain one-time items. Wall Street analysts had expected Dell to earn 28 cents a share on sales of $13.1 billion. A year ago, Dell reported earnings of $727 million, or 37 cents per share, on $15.2 billion in sales.

Shares of Dell fell by nearly 6% in extended trading after the report. At the end of regular trading Nov. 19, Dell’s stock closed down 19 cents, or 1.2%, at 15.87.

The weakness was spread across nearly all of Dell’s businesses. Sales to large businesses bore the brunt of the declines as information technology departments continue to keep a tight rein on costs. Nearly 80% of Dell’s sales are to businesses and government customers. “We are losing share in the aggregate” because of a heavy reliance on commercial sales, Gladden told reporters during a conference call after the results were announced.

Dell didn’t see much benefit from Microsoft’s launch of its new Windows 7 operating system on Oct. 22, since Dell’s quarter ended eight days later. In the two weeks leading up to the launch, customers put off PC purchases to avoid buying machines with older software running on them, Gladden said. “We built a little backlog as a result, and we’ll ship through that in the fourth quarter,” he said.

Dell’s gross profit margin came in at 17.3%, or 18.3% after excluding one-time expenses related to the closure of a plant in North Carolina. Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros., said he was expecting an 18.6% profit margin in a Nov. 19 research note.

Dell’s consumer sales fell by 10% during the quarter, but Gladden said Dell “walked away from some retail business during the quarter” that wasn’t acceptably profitable in order to preserve margins.

Turn back to BusinessWeek.com later tonight for a full report on Dell’s third quarter, and a look at what’s ahead for the company.

Salesforce will begin selling the new software, called Chatter, next year at a price of $50 per user each month. The software works with Salesforce’s core customer management software to display “profiles” of employees and posts about projects they’re working on or customers they’ve visited. “I know more about these strangers on Facebook than I do about my own employees and what they’re working on,” Benioff said during a speech at the company’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. “I know when my friends went to the movies, but not when my VP of sales visited our top customer.”

Chatter pushes Salesforce, expected to reach $1.3 billion in revenues this year, into the crowded field for collaboration software. Salesforce is trying to expand beyond the customer management software that’s been its bread and butter. Microsoft’s SharePoint Server, an IBM product called Atlas that works with its Lotus e-mail software, and Google’s recently introduced Wave all offer business users the ability to share information and hold conversations on the Web.

Software developers will be able to use Chatter to build their own applications, Salesforce said. The move comes as some of the tech industry’s largest vendors are releasing tools that let programmers create cloud computing applications delivered over the Internet. Microsoft on Nov. 17 launched Windows Azure, software for letting Windows developers build cloud computing applications using familiar Microsoft technologies. Google and Amazon.com also offer tools for developers to build cloud applications.

Look for updated coverage on BusinessWeek.com, including excepts from an interview I’ll conduct with Benioff later today.

The unanimous "declaratory ruling" made good on a promise FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski made in an otherwise coolly received speech at an industry conference in early October. Under the new rules, state and local governments must act within 90 days of receiving an application for a co-location, that is, a tower site to be shared with other operators, and 150 days for other applications. Carriers have complained that governments are frustrating their efforts to improve coverage by sitting on tower applications indefinitely.

The FCC also ruled that state or local governments may not use the fact that wireless service is available from another carrier as ground for rejecting an application. And they may not require a zoning variance for every cell site.

For carriers, this additional fee spells a revenue bonanza. An average American pays $50 in wireless service fees today, according to industry association CTIA. As consumers tuck on additional data services, such as those for their new laptops, netbooks and smartphones, that amount could begin to climb, even if voice minute charges keep on shrinking. Average monthly bill amount has been essentially flat since 2003.

Money transfers' popularity shouldn't come as a surprise. This is a huge business in the U.S. and around the world already. Today, most consumers have to come into, say, a Western Union location or use their PC to complete a transaction. It can be problematic and time-consuming for many people to get to either one; but most everyone carries a phone. Another consultant, Juniper Research, expects international mobile money transfers to top $65 billion by 2014.

For the top 10 features Gartner expects to be present on smartphones in 2012, check out this list.

Factery Labs, debuting early Nov. 17, aims to pick up where Google leaves off. Instead of providing the usual list of Web pages, the Menlo Park (Calif.)-based startup reads all those pages first and then extracts facts from them by zeroing in on sentences--strings with a subject, then a verb--and assuming they represent facts of some kind. Then it creates an index of those facts and ranks them. The technology is called FactRank, in a nod to Google's patented PageRank.

"People want facts" out of their searches, says Factery Labs cofounder and President Paul Pedersen, a veteran of search engines such as Infoseek, Google, and Powerset and founder of data management firm Mark Logic. "They want to know right here and right now."

But the question is what happens to Droid sales in week two, three and those that follow--as dozens of other Android phones are expected to hit the market, as Olga Kharif points out in her story in the magazine. As of now, the device--which has gotten mostly good reviews--is benefiting from a huge marketing push from Verizon, estimated to total around $100 million. No doubt, you've seen the "I Don't" ads, which clearly position Droid as a superior alternative to Apple's iPhone.

That's an effective advertising campaign, especially when combined with Verizon's "there's a map for that" ads that bust on AT&T's reputation for spotty 3G coverage. Former Motorola CEO Ed Zander, for one, thinks Moto "has a good shot to sell a ton of Droids" if the device emerges as the gotta-have phone on the Verizon network. Indeed, if Motorola can maintain this 250,000-a-week clip for a quarter, it would move 3.25 million Droids. That would make it a blockbuster and the iPhone's nearest rival. Apple sold 7.4 million of its iPhone 3Gs in the company's just announced fiscal quarter. And Flurry's Peter Farago says the firm's data shows that Apple sold 600,000 iPhones during Droid's debut week.

But Droid's main competition isn't really the iPhone: it's fragmentation of the Android market. Clearly, Apple will have no problem keeping consumers focused on its device. The iPhone is the only smart phone Apple sells, and the company spends beaucoup bucks reinforcing a clear, powerful message: buy an iPhone, and get the benefit of Apple quality as well as those 100,000 apps in the App Store.

Now consider Motorola's challenge. Within weeks, consumers who go into a Verizon store will have many of different phones to choose from. Many of these devices will have a different "skin", a layer of software interface to make it stand out. That may make strategic sense on paper, but all these different interfaces is bound to confuse consumers. Also, it's not clear to me whether all of those 12,000-plus Android apps will run on all Android devices, further muddling the message.

And Zander wonders if consumers will be put off by the complexity of the Android model. It's bad enough with the iPhone, where Apple is responsible for the device and AT&T for the network. With Android, "are you buying from Verizon, or Google or Motorola?" While Zander thinks current Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has done "a helluva job," he also thinks "there are a lot of competitors in this space. It's going to be an interesting Christmas."

In my lead story for the package, "Fertile Ground for Startups," I made two big points:
1. Startups are playing an increasingly important role in American business
2. Startups may play a central role in any recovery.

There was one startling new study, based on 2007 Census data, I was unable to work into the story that I want to highlight now, which provides some empirical evidence supporting the second point.

According to a new study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which was co-written by the respected economist Robert Litan, companies less than five years old generated nearly two-third of the net new jobs created in the U.S. in 2007. Without these startups, "net job creation for the American economy would be negative in all but a handful of years."

The upshot: It is clear more than ever that new companies and the entrepreneurs that lead them are the engines of job creation and economic recovery.

It is well known within economic circles that new companies produce the majority of new jobs in the U.S. economy. What this reports reveals for the first time is extent of that trend, and the fact that startups play a particularly important role in growing jobs out of a recession. New companies have produced all of the net new jobs in the U.S. from 2001-2007, and also from 1980-1983, the last big American downturn, according to the study.

This has huge implications for the Obama Administration as it tries to get the economy growing again. It also suggests a shift in focus and policy. Instead of focusing on saving large and dying industries (i.e. automakers and banks), the Obama Admin. should "begin paying more attention to removing roadblocks to entrepreneurs who will lead us out our current (well-founded) pessimism about jobs and sustain economic expansion over the long run," wrote the authors of the report.

One idea the authors float: granting a payroll tax holiday for new companies. This is a great and timely idea, especially since the expected health care reform law is supposed to increase the cost of doing business for new companies. Such a targeted tax cut could help offset the pain of health care reform and give new employers more of a reason to ramp up hiring.

This isn't to discount the role that big companies play in job creation. Large companies with 10,000 or more employees account for more than 10% of net job creation. But even then the authors note that those new net jobs may stem from the process of big companies acquiring young ones. "One of the only ways for big companies to add net jobs is to acquire younger companies that are not only generating jobs, but also are responsible for a good number of innovations that will keep the bigger company's revenue from diminishing," write the authors.

- Spencer Ante also publishes the Creative Capital blog. Click here to read more.

Where Will the Jobs Come From? Startups!

The original Bold 9000, which hit the market in May, 2008, has been the flagship of the BlackBerry line. The Bold 9700, available today from T-Mobile for $200 on a two-year contract and on Nov. 22 from AT&T, offers everything the Bold did--sometimes better and sometimes smaller.

Physically, the Bold strongly resembles assorted Curve models, though it retains the Bold's premium look and feel with a metal bezel around the top of the handset and a leatherette back. Like recent curves, it replaces the fidgety track ball with an optical sensor that tracks finger movement on a pad below the screen--a big improvement. It weighs about half an ounce (14 g) less than then original Bold.

I'd heard that an increase of 10% to 15% would likely get the deal done, so this improvement seems designed to accomplish two simultaneous goals: to put the acquisition over the top, without sending the message that Cisco will panic and radically pay up when shareholders of acquisition targets hold out for more. That's critical for a company as acquisitive as Cisco, which has done four large deals in just the last 45 days. At Cisco's shareholder meeting on Nov. 12, Cisco CEO John T. Chambers warned that "I'll walk" rather than overpay. "We're not going to pay a price that we don't think is good for shareholders."

One way or another, Chambers needed to get this deal done. He has said that video is his number one strategic priority, and video-conferencing in particular is a great opportunity for Cisco. Few, if any, forms of traffic chew up bandwidth and require more sophisticated routing and switching than videoconferencing--which needs to be not only high-res, but real-time.

And buying Tandberg was clearly the best way to accelerate his grand video plans. The company is not only the market leader in videoconferencing gear, but it's by far the hottest player in the market--not only with the mid-tier conference room systems that are the bulk of the industry, but also for high-end telepresence systems like the ones Cisco sells. Multiple industry sources I've spoken to say Tandberg routinely beats Cisco in deals for these systems, which create the illusion that you're actually sitting in the same room with other attendees, wherever they may be.

Also, Cisco needed to find a way to embrace open standards for its telepresence offerings. Currently, Cisco's systems only work with other Cisco systems, for the most part. That's unacceptable, for a company that built its Internet equipment empire by championing the most important open standard of them all--the Internet Protocol. Analysts say Tandberg is a leader not only in product innovation, but in making its gear inter-operate with other brands.

Here's a video of Chambers and Tandberg CEO Fredrik Halvorsen talking about the deal at the time.

Glyde, a startup created by former eBay Motors founder and chief Simon Rothman, is betting there's plenty of room left for newcomers that can make the whole buying and selling process much faster and easier. On Nov. 16, the Palo Alto-based company is debuting the site, which it promises will provide single-click purchasing for buyers (after the first one, during which you have to fill in your credit-card and shipping information) and 10-second item listing for sellers.

So-called orphan works, millions of books for which copyright laws still apply but whose rights owner is unknown or cannot be located, will still be scanned and sold in an online registry. New revisions to the plan call for an independent trustee to collect revenues generated from orphan works for up to 10 years, or until the rights holders are found. After 10 years, that money will be donated towards the continued effort to seek out copyright owners.

In September, head of the US Copyright Office Marybeth Peters said Google's initial "opt-out" proposal to scan orphan works before attempting to find rights owners amounted to a throwing out of "fundamental copyright principles." Though the most recent revisions stipulate more rigorous steps for collecting and distributing money to authors and publishers, the proposed agreement is still opt-out, as Danny Sullivan pointed out in his blog Search Engine Land. Peters is still likely to object.

Other revisions which are likely to sway some critics include a new geographical limit to the the deal. Now, the Google Books Settlement applies only to U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia. That will please the governments of France and Germany, who have objected to the plan.

In the next week, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin is expected to schedule a fairness hearing to hear arguments for and against the revised agreement. Expect to hear from groups like the Open Book Alliance, the coalition led by former Microsoft antitrust watchdog Gary Reback, which has already objected to the new agreement in a blog post.

The only real surprise here was the swiftness and thoroughness of Apple's victory. Judge Alsup basically ruled that the OS X End User License Agreement (EULA), which prohibits the installation of the software on non-Apple hardware, is legal and means exactly what it says. It is just the latest in a long string of ruling upholding EULAs, sometimes called shrinkwrap or click-wrap licenses.

Here's what Dell is saying, beyond the press release, on its Direct2Dell blog.