Verizon ingeniously foils Alltel's 'My Circle' plan after all
Fans of the soon-to-be-defunct Alltel Wireless "geeks in shirts" advertising campaign will remember the debut of the 2006 "My Circle" calling plan, where subscribers could choose 10 friends or family members to include in their "calling circles." Folks who were a little older than the guys who appeared in the "Food Court" ad from that campaign -- which helped establish Alltel's entire marketing focus thereafter -- will recall that "calling circles" wasn't a phrase coined by Alltel.
It was MCI that established "calling circles" in 1991, in a breakthrough marketing campaign called "Friends & Family" that helped save the company during its landmark long distance battles against AT&T, and which established database marketing as a serious tool and even a competitive weapon.
Amazon EC2 cloud to add IBM software images
IBM today announced its intention to enable customers of its Passport Advantage license program to deploy IBM and Tivoli applications using Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform. But rather than develop those applications on its own, or create pre-packaged WebSphere applications in the cloud, it will immediately allow for developers to use Amazon Machine Images to build applications that may later be tested on a broader customer base, when Amazon releases IBM software on its cloud platform in the coming months.
The intention is to give developers access to Lotus Web Content Management, DB2, Informix Dynamic Server, and WebSphere Portal and sMash, as well as underlying SUSE Linux Enterprise software. Amazon already offers Windows Server 2003 images; this plan will make possible a competitive Linux-based offering that already has leading commercial middleware and database software ready to go.
While AMD banks on Abu Dhabi, Intel waves a $7 billion US flag
In what may very well be an intentional jab at its competitor's survival plan that relies on foreign investors, Intel yesterday began touting its own $7 billion investment plan as an indicator of its "faith in the US."
"When we face a crisis -- let's be honest -- our habit is to hunker down and hold fast to what we have and what we know: the jobs, the businesses, the institutions, and the ways of life we are familiar with and don't want to lose," stated Intel CEO Paul Otellini, in a speech to the Economic Club in Washington, DC yesterday. "It is a perfectly understandable reaction when uncertainty becomes a part of our lives. But I see this economic crisis differently. Our institutions and paradigms have become unfrozen by this economic crisis. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-shape how things will look and behave as growth resumes.
Not enough votes to approve AMD spinoff until maybe next week
What was expected to have been a hassle-free affair, with shareholders likely approving AMD's risky "asset-smart" reorganization move, had to be postponed until next Wednesday due to the absence of a quorum.
An AMD spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that the measure to issue new shares of the company -- a measure necessary to effectively create the basis for the entity still being called The Foundry Company -- had to be postponed since not enough shareholders showed up at the Hilton Austin Airport hotel for the meeting.
Mozilla: Yes, there is a Fennec for Windows Mobile
Mozilla contributor Brad Lassey announced on his blog yesterday that a "pre-alpha" (we need another Greek letter for these things, apparently) of his organization's Fennec mobile browser experiment, based on the Firefox engine, has been released for the Windows Mobile-based HTC Touch Pro.
With Nokia scaling back its production of the N810 tablet, the team experimenting with Fennec has been searching for new target platforms, and the Touch Pro may be the one. It's supported in the States by Verizon Wireless and AT&T.
Report fuels speculation that Sirius XM may find a suitor in EchoStar
Spokespersons for both Sirius XM and EchoStar Communications are declining comment to Betanews this morning after a New York Times story last night cited unnamed sources as saying the two are in business negotiations.
According to the story which only cites sources "involved in the process," the satellite radio broadcaster is considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, after which it may consider being bought out by satellite TV provider EchoStar. The CEOs of both companies, the Times sources state, are personally involved in these talks.
Nvidia in trouble: 60% lower revenue, will reduce chip starts
In one of the most dramatic representations yet of the downturn in the global economy, GPU maker Nvidia's entire fiscal 2009 dove deep into the red ink, turning a banner year into a red flag in just one quarter.
If it hadn't have been for the economy, Nvidia's year would actually have turned out okay. But a $147.6 million loss for just the quarter ending last January -- its fiscal Q4 2009 -- dipped the entire year into the red to the tune of $30.
Senate passage of stimulus bill could fuel latest broadband debate
If you receive government money to build a broadband pipeline for rural areas, do you have an obligation to remain open to all customers? Or to make yourself closed to certain ones? It depends on your definition of "open."
The latest version of the President's economic stimulus package passed a US Senate vote this afternoon, though not without some trimming of its projected expenditures. As a result, the projected $9 billion annual allotment (originally $6 billion) for funding the expansion of broadband service in rural areas, was trimmed to $7 billion, according to Broadcasting & Cable.
Livermore's IBM BlueGene/P will be chased by one from Europe
If the US government thought that investing DOE money into a 20 petaflop computer would give the country a competitive advantage, it learned today it's mistaken: IBM will also be partnering with German researchers.
While the initial goal for the BlueGene/P model being developed for the Forschungszentrum Juelich's Gauss Centre for Supercomputing will be to break just the one petaflop barrier -- the one thousand trillion floating-point instruction mark already superseded by two US Dept. of Energy supercomputers with IBM's help -- the design chosen is the same one the company announced last week for Lawrence Livermore Labs.
Mozilla CEO: Firefox is 'a crack in the Microsoft monopoly'
If there is indeed a new spirit of cooperation and interoperability embodied by the US' new leadership, then it has apparently stopped short of the Web browser market, where a very old argument rages on.
In a belated response to an already ancient topic that for many had already become so dead that you can't quite tell the carcass was a horse any more, Mozilla Chairman and CEO Mitchell Baker declared on her blog late last week her current opinion: Microsoft continues, she says, to apply monopoly pressure on the Web market by distributing Internet Explorer in such a way that customers are not aware that they have a choice.
Public beta of an electronic mailing alternative to the Post Office
A public beta of an innovative, if ambitious, project originally announced in December is being launched this morning: Imagine if someone who normally sends you mail via your US Mail box outside your front door were instead to send an electronic document to an address that's keyed to that same postal address -- not your e-mail, but your street number. You'd have access to that electronic delivery location because, well, you live there.
That's the notion behind Zumbox, a service that relies on both sender and receiver to be interested in sending regular mail electronically. You may have read about this "electronic mail" concept, it's in all the papers. Zumbox's value proposition is that it may enable services like public utilities, print publications, and other firms that do their business with consumers using dead trees and postal carriers, to instead save the time and post electronic documents (maybe PDFs, maybe Word files) online to the very same postal address.
Intel backs away from some public appearances overseas
One of the casualties of Intel scaling back its costs is a reduction in its public appearances, particularly overseas. Perhaps second only to the company's annual Developers' Forum in the US (which remains scheduled for September 22 in San Francisco) is its annual appearance in Taiwan, which is closer to the motherboard manufacturers upon which Intel relies. Now that event -- originally scheduled for next November -- has been cancelled, as Taiwan's leading industry daily DigiTimes was first to report, and Intel's IDF Web site also shows that its Beijing conference scheduled for April 8 has been trimmed back by one day.
Last October in Taipei, Intel introduced its Capella power-saving architecture for its Nehalem generation 45 nm processors, along with some new advancements in the Atom processor that's powering more and more netbooks. Conceivably, though, any new milestones in Intel's roadmap may still be announced in San Francisco in September.
AMD's 45 nm midrange Phenom IIs aim to regain the performance lead
Last month, the one-time price-performance leader introduced its first desktop-class, upper-tier 45 nm Phenom II processors. Today, AMD is readying its midrange CPUs in that category, with a strategy that just might work.
As far as process generations are concerned, AMD is one big step behind Intel already, with that company's Core i7 architecture starting to incorporate almost everything AMD used to champion -- including a built-in memory controller -- while also using 32 nm lithography. AMD's strategy to contest Core i7 is looking clearer: Erase the perceived advantage of Core i7 by challenging its performance at lower price points, and enticing customers in the value segment with the prospects of one extra core.
Google Sync made possible through patent license with Microsoft
As it turns out, Google did not develop a calendar and contacts synchronization platform all on its own. Rather, it licensed Exchange Server patents from Microsoft, in a deal that company is describing today as an "open" license.
This morning, Google launched its initial beta for a contacts synchronization service that enables individuals to share information for up to five mobile calendars and three e-mail addresses between devices, including iPhone, S60, BlackBerry, Sony Ericsson, and Windows Mobile phones. If that list sounded familiar, it's because their manufacturers are all on the patent licensing agreement list announced by Microsoft last December 18.
Latest Mozilla updates, including Firefox, address a serious vulnerability
Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0.6 for Windows from Fileforum now.
Some of Mozilla's best researchers into the field of cross-site scripting discovered another instance where code from one site can be made to control the interface of another. As it turns out, version 3.0.6 software contains the fix.
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