What makes Google tick? A management consultant takes an adoring look
Most business books are very much of a particular moment, and when that moment passes -- management changes, stock prices plummet, or the buzz that made the business book-worthy slips away -- the book seems dated. This, then is the moment to grab Bernard Girard's The Google Way. which documents the workings of the search giant.
Girard, a management consultant, has been tracking Google since 2000, and his book analyzes the structure and philosophy of the company even as it's grappled with the current recession. (This means we're more current than the French, who got an earlier version of this text in 2006 as Une Révolution du Management: le Modèle Google.) Girard sees the Sergey-Brin-Schmidt triumvirate as no less innovative than a Henry Ford or a Taiichi Ohno (the man who made Toyota a global powerhouse) or Ikea's Ingvar Kamprad. Google's strength, he posits, doesn't merely come from superior algorithms but from rethinking how a company functions.
Britons confused about their broadband, says survey
Following up on a report by Ofcom that UK broadband subscribers only get half of their promised speeds, comparison shopping site Broadband Genie today says not only are connections slower, but subscribers don't know what they're paying for.
Using the Thinkbroadband speed test, Broadband Genie surveyed customers of the top 8 UK broadband suppliers, asking what broadband package they subscribe to and what the promised speeds are. Like Ofcom's report (PDF here) which said Britain's average downlink speed is 3.6 Mbps of a promised 7.2 Mbps, the data showed that the average actual downlink speed for UK customers is 45.8% of the advertised speed limit.
Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 to ship before the holidays
Microsoft's Windows Business Senior Vice President Bill Veghte delivered what may very well have been one of the more disappointing keynote addresses to TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles this morning, judging not only in terms of features but in pure speech quality. But one hour and fifteen minutes into the address, he answered the key question he called one of two "elephants in the room:"
"When are we going to ship? This is a question that I get a lot," Veghte said. "We're going for holiday and we're tracking very, very well for it."
Windows Mobile 6.5: What we should expect
All indications are that today is the day Microsoft will officially launch Windows Mobile 6.5, the incremental update from Redmond that seeks to bring the resistive touch OS up to speed with the "finger friendly" capacitive touch devices that led the market last year.
Since last November, when CEO Steve Ballmer announced Windows Mobile 6.5 at a conference in Australia, the OS has been on a hurried path toward launch. It was introduced at Mobile World Congress, and then received a graphical overhaul in time for MIX 09, when the trademark on-screen "honeycomb" was eliminated. Shortly thereafter, Ballmer essentially dismissed the whole update as a provisional release prior to Windows Mobile 7, forestalling his marketing team's effort to build up momentum prior to today.
Second wave of Windows 7 updates tomorrow, but they won't be for real
The big difference in using Verizon Wireless over its competitors, its current wave of TV ads suggest, is that every user is backed up by "the network." With Windows 7, Microsoft is working to create a similarly distinguishing value proposition. It'll be given its biggest test to date tomorrow, as "the network" from Microsoft pushes out a series of 10 placebo system updates, to see how well it can handle the heavy Patch Tuesdays yet to come.
As the Windows Update Product Team blogged on Friday, the boatload for the Win7 RC's first Patch Tuesday will contain ten update patches. Nine of them will run automatically and should run flawlessly. One won't, but that's part of the plan.
Top 10 Windows 7 Features #6: DirectX 11
Early in the history of Windows Vista's promotional campaign, before the first public betas, Microsoft's plan was to create a desktop environment unlike any other, replete with such features as 3D rendered icons and buttons, and windows that zoomed into and off the workspace as though they occupied the space in front of the user's face. That was a pretty tall order, and we expected Microsoft to scale back from that goal somewhat. But for several months, journalists were given heads-up notices that there would be several tiers of Windows performance -- at one point, as many as five -- and that the highest tier, described as a kind of desktop nirvana, would be facilitated by the 3D rendering technology being called DirectX 10.
DirectX is a series of graphics libraries that enable Windows programs to "write" graphics data directly to screen elements, rather than to ordinary windows. While the operating system's principal graphics library since version 3.0 has been the Graphics Device Interface (GDI), its handles on memory are tied to window identities and locations. But it's DirectX that makes it possible for a 3D rendered game to be played in the Windows OS without having to be "in" a window like, say, Excel 2003.
Prototype kits for bigger E-paper displays available now
Now that the Kindle DX is available, the E Ink Corporation has made its 9.7" E-paper display prototype kit available to the public.
IBM tackles Microsoft with blade servers and cloud services
Targeted mostly at midrange customers who might otherwise turn to Windows, the new IBM Express Advantage products rolled out this week include newer and faster models of IBM's BladeCenter Express servers, along with a new hardware/software bundle called the "Comprehensive Data Protection Solution,"
said Bob Kelly, TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) product manager, in a briefing with Betanews.
In a separate announcement this week, IBM launched WebSpan, a fee-based, service-oriented software environment that's already drawing a lot of comparisons with Microsoft's Azure.
Wi-Lan settles with Infineon, gains hundreds of patents
More than a year and a half after suing 22 companies for infringement of three of its Wi-Fi/ODFM patents, Ottawa, Canada-based Wi-Lan Technologies has just settled with one of the defendants, Infineon Technologies, who has agreed to a licensing deal.
As a part of the settlement, Infineon will license several Wi-Lan patents in wireless and wireline technology, including xDSL and Wireless LAN. While most terms of the deal are confidential, a separate transaction occurred between the two companies this week, in which Wi-Lan purchased a number of patents from Infineon.
Lenovo abruptly drops ThinkVantage 'big blue button' support
It was announced in late March, but only as Lenovo owners get around to updating their systems are they becoming aware that ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU), the power behind the "big blue button," has been discontinued, eliminating the line's beloved automatic-update capability.
One-click driver update capability has been a longtime feature of the ThinkPad line, which include a large programmable button (labeled "Access IBM" on IBM-era machines and "ThinkVantage" on the later Lenovo models) set up for that purpose. Clicking the button after boot-up fired up the TVSU process, which downloaded many if not all of the driver updates required for that particular machine.
Usage share for both Windows and IE sink ever so slowly
In Web usage statistics now expanded to include mobile platforms, Windows is slipping against not just Macintosh and Linux, but also against iPhone, iPod Touch, and Java ME. This according to the latest live statistics from Net Applications, which samples global Web traffic from its clients.
Among visitors to all of Web sites tracked by Net Applications, Windows has dropped nearly 3 full percentage points in under a year, falling from 94.8% to 87.9% between June 2008 and April 2009. Apple's Mac OS rose from 7.94% to 9.73% over the same time frame, while Linux clients broke the one percent hurdle for the first time ever, stepping from 0.80% to 1.02%.
Dish Network adds remote DVR access
Following in the footsteps of TiVo and DirecTV, Dish Network today launched Dish Remote Access, which lets customers access and program their home DVRs from any Internet connected device.
Users can search for, and schedule to record, content on multiple receivers up to nine days in advance. Searches can be filtered by genre, channel, content rating, language, and more. There are currently a few limitations to the service, which include a lack of control over external hard drives, no ability to switch between Tuner 1 and Tuner 2, and over-the-air listings that are subject to irregular availability.
No clear decision on Microsoft .NET Micro Framework's new business status
Granted, Microsoft's not accustomed to scaling back operations as drastically as it has had to this year, so it's understandable when a company gets the first-time jitters. But as of this morning, not even the people who direct the development of .NET Micro Framework -- Microsoft's innovative development platform for small devices -- can give a definitive answer with regard to what's happening to the project, shedding only selective rays of light on already fuzzy explanations.
On Wednesday, ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley was first with a story saying Microsoft had made the decision to release the .NET MF project to "the community," though the company left the true definition of that term to the rest of the world to ponder. Foley's original source for her story -- as is typical for the veteran journalist -- was Microsoft itself, whose spokesperson had told her and others in the press, "Microsoft also intends to give customers and the community access to the source code," She also quoted portions of the statement saying the business model for .NET MF was changing to "the community model."
EA invites beta testers for Ultima Online expansion pack
Electronic Arts' MMORPG-centric studio Mythic Entertainment, is now accepting applications for the closed beta of Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss, which will begin later this month.
Ultima Online is one of the most popular and longest-running massively multiplayer games in existence, which according to EA was the first of its kind to reach a subscriber base of more than 100,000 active users. Stygian Abyss focuses on Gargoyles, characters that have been central to the Ultima series since Ultima VI was released nearly 20 years ago for DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, and Commodore 64.
Wakoopa survey reveals the software geeks use most
Ever wondered who the heck uses AOL's proprietary software in 2009, or if anyone's seriously still on Yahoo? A first-ever survey from Wakoopa holds the intriguing promise of looking primarily at the computer habits of People Like Us. For now, anyway.
Wakoopa, which provides a social-networking and application-search space for software users, garners its data through a (voluntary) desktop tracking program that clocks which apps users use and for how long, along with apps users recommend and share with each other. So far, over 75,000 users have installed the tracker.
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