Merc News Archive

60-Second Business Break: TiVo 3Q loss narrows

2006-11-29T15:31:00.000-08:00

60-Second Business Break

TiVo 3Q loss narrows, but rebates expected to hurt holiday quarter
PLUS: GM PROMISES PLUG-IN HYBRID; MICROSOFT'S ZUNE DEBUTS AT NO. 2
By Frank Michael Russell, Mercury News Assistant Business Editor
TiVo, the struggling San Jose pioneer in the digital video recorder market, reported a net loss for its latest quarter that was narrower than a year ago.

LATEST FROM THE NEWSROOM

Group cites video games for violence, sex - 11/29/2006 12:02 PM PST
Economy grows by 2.2 percent in third quarter, better than first thought - 11/29/2006 12:02 PM PST
CEO: GM starting work on plug-in version of Saturn Vue hybrid - 11/29/2006 10:24 AM PST

» MORE

FROM TODAY'S SECTION

Quinn: Silicon Valley's own version of snake oil? - 11/29/2006 03:01 AM PST
By Michelle Quinn, Mercury News
BitTorrent cuts online video deals - 11/29/2006 03:01 AM PST
By Troy Wolverton, Mercury News
TiVo offers new way to reach viewers - 11/29/2006 03:01 AM PST
By Ryan Blitstein, Mercury News
Ruling delays MediaNews, Hearst from joint-ad efforts - 11/29/2006 03:01 AM PST
By Pete Carey, Mercury News
N.Y. firm to buy Rita Medical Systems - 11/29/2006 03:01 AM PST
By Steve Johnson, Mercury News

» FULL SECTION

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SiliconValley.com - Good Morning Silicon Valley

2006-11-29T12:23:00.000-08:00

News | Columnists | Personal Technology | Markets | Venture Capital

Published: Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Me? I'm between jobs until the Zune incentive program rolls out

By JOHN PACZKOWSKI
When Zune, Microsoft's shameless imitation of the iPod, arrived at market a fortnight ago, it was as notable for the features it lacked, as it was for those it offered. Absent from the device was a promised DJ setting, which would have allowed Zune owners to wirelessly DJ music to up to four other Zunes. Also missing was support for wireless syncing with Wi-Fi-equipped PCs and wireless access to the Zune Marketplace. Finally, Zune's "vertically integrated music ecosystem" lacked its rumored incentive-based super distribution system -- a program that would have compensated people for Zune-to-Zune sharing. The absence of this system from Zune was particularly notable, since it seemed the only breakaway feature the device had over the iPod. So it was interesting to hear Microsoft's J Allard discussing it in public recently. Appearing at the Music Tech Summit in Seattle, Allard talked up the idea of encouraging Zune owners to share music by offering them a sales commission in Zune Marketplace Points. The super distribution system he described was remarkably similar to the one used by Weedshare. Which makes perfect sense, really, because Microsoft has applied for the patent that describes it.

Patent No. 10/326678: "Redistribution of Rights-Managed Content and Technique for Encouraging Same" -- which, incidentally, figures prominently in a Microsoft Research whitepaper on digital media sharing commissions -- describes a system that adds tracking data to DRM-protected media files when they are purchased and uses that data to assign incentives, such as commission payments, when the files are shared with and re-purchased by others. It was originally developed by John Beezer, president of Shared Media Licensing, Weedshare's parent company. But Beezer later assigned his rights to it to Microsoft, which has since applied for its own patent on it.

Now here's where things get interesting. A source with direct knowledge of the transaction tells me that Microsoft signed a patent non-assertion agreement that grants Shared Media Licensing the rights to exploit its patent and any patents related to it without fear of legal repercussions. So if Microsoft should roll out a Zune compensated sharing program based on it, Shared Media Licensing and Weedshare already are in a unique position to leverage it for their own benefit.

Bryan Lee, Corporate Vice President, of Microsoft's entertainment business and Allard did not respond to my requests for comment on incentive-based sharing and Microsoft's patent non-assertion agreement with Shared Media Licensing, and the Microsoft spokesperson I did chat with was ... uniquely unhelpful. So I have nothing official from Microsoft on this other than Allard's comments at the Music Tech Summit. That said, there seems to be plenty of evidence to suggest that compensated sharing will be part of the core Zune product strategy and that it will likely be very similar to the system we see today in Weedshare, but perhaps a bit broader. Think super distribution. Think games. Software. Video.

And where does this leave Shared Media Licensing and Weedshare? In a very interesting position, should all this actually come to pass. Certainly, there are worse places to be than holding the rights to exploit the intellectual property on which a core feature of a major Microsoft product is based.
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Q U O T E D

"If you make a film and you're having a hard time getting people to see it, break it into six chapters and throw it up on YouTube. There's a good chance somebody will see it."

-- Director Kevin Smith sketches out his comeback plan after the unnecessary sequel to his 1994 hit "Clerks."
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So where'd you find this copy of napsterbizplan.torrent anyway? Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken. And, as Napster knows, wrapping good intentions around software widely used to distribute pirated digital media does not make you a successful legitimate business. Which is something to keep in mind today in light of the latest announcements around BitTorrent's "legitimate" media store. This morning the company behind the Web's most popular peer-to-peer application, announced a number of new content deals that will add programming from Fox, Paramount, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lions Gate Entertainment and Starz Media to its library of licensed digital content. When BitTorrent's new service debuts in February, it will allow users to download film titles likes "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "Mission: Impossible III," as well as popular TV shows like "Prison Break," "South Park" and "SpongeBob SquarePants." Quite the coup for a company which was once an entertainment industry pariah. "This demonstrates that we're being very successful in bringing on partners to use BitTorrent for reaching our audience with their content," said Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent. "I think our users will be very excited by the nature of the content we're acquiring. It's relevant to our audience and will be programmed for their benefit."

BitTorrent hopes these new content deals will help it convert pirate downloaders into paying customers. And it's convinced that even a small conversion rate -- say 10% -- will ensure the success of its new venture. But can it really transition from unlicensed free-for-all to paid service? Research from Parks Associates suggests it can be done. In a poll late last year, 13 percent of Internet users currently downloading movies using peer-to- peer services said they would pay $20 per film to do it legally; 18 percent of those downloading TV shows would pay $5. And 38 percent of people currently using peer-to-peer services would pay $5 for a movie. Compelling metrics, certainly, but the market is still gray. "It's going to confuse consumers that BitTorrent is this free, no-holds- barred, we-don't-care-if-it's-copyrighted place to share, then there's this paid, copy-protected area," Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff told the L.A. Times. "The problem is consumers are not convinced that paying for and downloading video is worth it. The other problem is it doesn't end up on the TV set. The mechanisms that do get it to the TV, like DVD burning, are not quite what they need to be."

Previously:

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Google Answers: Blowin' in the wind:

Question: What has happened to Answers?
Answer: There is no answer at this time.
-- A question posed by a Google Answers researcher in late October.

Since its launch in 2005, Google Answers has provided responses to innumerable questions of import -- "How is synthetic urine manufactured?", "Can a liver move in the fridge? " "Give me one good reason not to drink water emitted by my air conditioner" -- but in the end it was unable to answer the toughest question of all: Why isn't our Q&A service as popular as Yahoo Answers? And so this morning the company said it plans to scuttle the social search service, which allowed people to submit questions that researchers answer for a fee. "Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time -- and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product," the developers responsible for the service wrote in a post to the company blog. "Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers." Google didn't really say why it decided to drop the hammer on Answers, but the reason is obvious. It simply hadn't caught on. According to Comscore stats, the service is far less popular than Yahoo Answers, which has surpassed it to become the second most popular Internet reference site after Wikipedia. In June, Yahoo Answers attracted 12.3 million unique visitors. During the same period, Google Answers attracted only 947,000. That's a quite a difference and one that surely played a role in its sudden retirement. But it can't be the only approach in the hopper. Google isn't a company that easily admits failure, and social search is far too important to its core mission for it to abandon. It's undoubtedly got a follow-up to Answers in development, one that will be far more useful, far more efficient than its predecessor.
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And just when the Great Leader needed to replace that plasma screen he ruined with "Missile Command" burn-in: Well, if North Korea's Kim Jong Il didn't think we were serious about curtailing all that atomic stuff, he certainly knows the score now -- we're cutting off his toys. In what are apparently the first U.S. trade sanctions ever custom tailored to annoy a specific foreign leader, the U.S. will ban shipments of all the accessories of the high life. According to our best intelligence, Kim likes gadgets, so no more iPods, plasma TVs or Segways. He likes basketball and music, so no more sports equipment or instruments. He likes a lifestyle that's just a notch above his citizens, so no more cognac, Rolexes, cigarettes, artwork, Cadillacs, Harleys or Jet Skis. All of which makes for good copy and accomplishes virtually nothing, except maybe put a slight crimp in the supply chain of fancy gifts that Kim likes to bestow upon the faithful. "It's a new concept; it's kind of creative," said William Reinsch, a former senior Commerce Department official who oversaw trade restrictions with North Korea during Bill Clinton's presidency. "The problem is there has always been and will always be this group of people who work at getting these goods illegally." And you have to believe if Kim's cadres can get him a nuclear weapon, they can darn sure round up a few iPods.
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Off topic: Manchester Bollards. In Manchester (UK), the local city council installed moving bollards to prevent commuters in cars from using bus lanes with catastrophic results. (Thanks, Random)

Send $2310 Stokke Gravity Chairs to Jpaczkowski@mercurynews.com.

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60-Second Business Break: Worried about housing market, investors sell off builders' stocks

2005-11-08T16:13:00.000-08:00

60-Second Business Break

60-SECOND BUSINESS BREAK

11/08/2005 03:34 PM PST
Worried about housing market, investors sell off builders' stocks
By Frank Michael Russell, Mercury News Assistant Business Editor
Investors are worried about the health of the housing market. The stocks of home builders including KB Home, Pulte and Toll Brothers fell sharply on Wall Street today. Plus, Rambus escaped a possible legal defeat; VOIP providers get 911 extension; Borland gets new CEO; IBM buys Network Solutions.

STORIES FROM TODAY'S MERCURY NEWS

Tech honoree denied entry into country - 11/08/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Steve Johnson, Mercury News
New deals expand on-demand access to prime-time TV - 11/08/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Tony Gnoffo, Knight Ridder
Chmielewski: Grokster shut down, plans legal service - 11/08/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Dawn C. Chmielewski, Mercury News
Program your TiVo through Yahoo - 11/08/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Michael Bazeley, Mercury News
Hollywood breathes sigh of relief over Grokster's demise, settlement - 11/08/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, Mercury News

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Edwards wins again with a pair of teammates in tow

2005-11-07T06:02:00.000-08:00

NASCAR News

Edwards goes 2-for-2

JUSTIN, Texas - Carl Edwards came from sixth to first in the final 11 laps, passing Roush Racing teammates Matt Kenseth and then Mark Martin in the final laps to win the Dickies 500 Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.

» Fort Worth Star-Telegram coverage
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SiliconValley.com - Good Morning Silicon Valley

2005-11-04T12:16:00.000-08:00

News | Columnists | Personal Technology | Markets | Venture Capital

Published: Friday, November 4, 2005

Safra and I were wondering why that guy kept showing up at the meetings

By JOHN PACZKOWSKI

Three co-presidents turned out to be one too many at Oracle. After a little more than four months on the job, Oracle Co-President and Chief Financial Officer Greg Maffei quit Thursday amid reports of "tabloid worthy" infighting in the senior ranks. A former CFO at Microsoft, Maffei was hired in June to replace Harry You, who resigned after eight months as Oracle's CFO to become chief executive officer of consulting-services company BearingPoint (see "So Greg, what do you say we buy SAP?"). But membership in Oracle's unusual leadership triumvirate, which included trusted lieutenants Charles Phillips and Safra Catz, turned out to be more than Maffei could stomach -- particularly after Ellison dubbed Catz as his likely successor, just three months after Maffei arrived. "Oracle's a great place, a great opportunity, but they have a fantastic CEO and they're likely to have that CEO for a long time,'' Maffei told Bloomberg. "It was not only a case that [Larry Ellison] was not leaving, but I was not the obvious heir apparent." For Oracle, no stranger to executive clashes, Maffei's is but a blip. The company shrugged off the departure, handing Catz the CFO reins for good. "This isn't a big deal," said Peter Coleman, an analyst with ThinkEquity Partners. "This is part of the dysfunctional nature of Oracle's senior leadership."
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Q U O T E D

"I really thought that Ajax was just a bathroom cleaner."

-- Satish Dhamaraj, CEO of collaborative e-mail venture Zimbra, who can be pardoned his confusion considering that the remote-scripting technology of several years ago has only recently acquired the acronym-friendly, Web 2.0 buzzworthy name "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML."
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Sorry about those secret files; what we meant to install were these secret files: Writing in Freedom to Tinker, Princeton professor Ed Felten takes Sony BMG and First4Internet to task for their "fix" to the Digital Rights Management rootkit they used to protect some new music CDs (see "Sony reconsiders policy on hiring 'reformed' hackers" and "Sony DRM: You can look but you can't touch"). Seems the patch may have made an already bad situation worse.

"[Sony] released a software update that they say 'removes the cloaking technology component that has been recently discussed in a number of articles,' " Felton writes. "Reading that statement, and the press statements by company representatives, you might think that that's all the update does. It's not. The update is more than 3.5 megabytes in size, and it appears to contain new versions of almost all the files included in the initial installation of the entire DRM system, as well as creating some new files. In short, they're not just taking away the rootkit-like function they're almost certainly adding things to the system as well. And once again, they're not disclosing what they're doing. No doubt they'll ask us to just trust them. I wouldn't. The companies still assert falsely that the original rootkit-like software 'does not compromise security' and '[t]here should be no concern' about it. So I wouldn't put much faith in any claim that the new update is harmless."
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How much for the first and last pages of "Gravity's Rainbow"? The publishing industry may have finally found its iTunes. Amazon on Thursday rolled out a micropayments program for books in an attempt to do for literature what Apple has done for music. Under the company's new Amazon Pages program, readers can purchase online access to as much or as little of a book as they'd like -- a chapter or even a single page. A second program, dubbed Amazon Upgrade, allows readers to add complete, perpetual online access to the purchase of a physical copy of a book. `We see this as a win-win-win situation: good for readers, good for publishers and good for authors,'' Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told the Associated Press.

Coming as it does on the heels of Google's controversial book-scanning effort (see "Google Print soon to be world's largest searchable archive of copyright suits," "Google announces ambitious plan to digitize pending litigation," and "Latest additions to Google Print double as handy sleep aid"), Amazon's efforts seem decidedly publisher-friendly. "This is the way it's supposed to work: to give consumers access to books and have revenues flow back to publishers and authors," Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild told the New York Times. "Conceptually, something similar might be possible for the Google program."
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Brilliant -- for pennies a box, we force Jobs to be a jerk: When Microsoft's Xbox 360 arrives later this month, you'll be able to stream music and photos to it from an iPod. For a little while, anyway. You see, Microsoft has made the entertainment console interoperable with Apple's iconic media device, but it's done so without Apple's blessing. "We do not have an official relationship with Apple for the iPod connectivity," said Scott Henson, product unit manager in Microsoft's advanced technology group, told News.com, explaining Apple had rejected Microsoft's proposal of a partnership on the feature. Building iPod support into Xbox 360 then is a bold move, especially when Microsoft is not working under the auspices of Apple's "Made for iPod" program. Indeed, some analysts are already saying Apple will likely hamper Xbox 360's iPod interoperability as soon as it's launched. "We expect Apple will have some retaliation ready within days or hours of the Xbox 360 shipping," Richard Doherty, president of analyst firm Envisioneering, told News.com. "If you have iTunes prior to last May, it may work with the Xbox 360 forever, but if you accept (Apple's) updates, it may work differently."
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C'mon kids, let's you, me and Mom head down to the gym and dance the night away: Call it exergaming. Broadcast Vision Entertainment is taking "Dance Dance Revolution" out of the arcades and into the health clubs, where exercisers can burn off a calorie or two leaping about on Konami's illuminated dancing pad. Dubbed "Dance Exercise Revolution," the game is simply an industrial strength version outfitted with stronger hardware and a longer warranty. "The fun and interactivity of 'Dance Exercise Revolution' opens the door for people of all ages that don't connect with conventional forms of exercise. It also creates an opportunity for membership-based clubs to attract entire families who can work out together." Broadcast Vision spokesperson Kevin Fee said in a statement. "The combination of music, video and competition make 'Dance Exercise Revolution' appealing to many of the couch potatoes of the world."
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Off topic: Kung-Fu F**k You (site not suitable for the easily offended; Thanks MeFi) Photoshop contest: violent video games made non-violent

Send hand sofas to Jpaczkowski@realcities.com.

Good Morning Silicon Valley is written and edited with the able assistance of John Murrell.

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60-Second Business Break: Mercury Interactive execs step down after investigation

2005-11-02T14:58:00.000-08:00

60-Second Business Break

60-SECOND BUSINESS BREAK

11/02/2005 02:16 PM PST
Mercury Interactive executives step down after stock-option investigation
By Frank Michael Russell, Mercury News Assistant Business Editor
The CEO of Mercury Interactive has resigned. CEO Amnon Landan and two other top officers of the Mountain View software maker have departed after an internal investigation of Mercury's stock-option practices. Plus, Symantec stock plummets; Intuit buys small business service site; Genentech gets approval for lung-cancer drug.

STORIES FROM TODAY'S MERCURY NEWS

Bush outlines $7.1 billion bird-flu virus battle plan - 11/02/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Steve Johnson, Mercury News
Langberg: Sun seems hearing-impaired on shareholder concerns - 11/02/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Mike Langberg, Mercury News
Dissidents win 3 seats on Exar's board - 11/02/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Therese Poletti, Mercury News
Microsoft unveils online services in bid to answer Google, Yahoo - 11/02/2005 03:01 AM PST
By John Boudreau and Michael Bazeley, Mercury News
Yahoo users in driver's seat - 11/02/2005 03:01 AM PST
By Matt Nauman, Mercury News

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Extreme makeover: After tornado, Atlanta ready for its Chase date

2005-10-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

NASCAR News

Friday, Oct 28, 2005

Garage Pass

Extreme makeover:
Race track edition
Struck by a July tornado, a rebuilt Atlanta Motor Speedway is ready for its Chase date

HAMPTON, Ga. - Bruton Smith still remembers the pickup truck. On July 7, the morning after a tornado hit Atlanta Motor Speedway, an extremely used truck was found several hundred feet from where it had been parked before the storm hit.

Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500:
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5-Minute Merc: Supreme Court nominee withdraws nomination; What Bay Area parents worry about most

2005-10-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

5-Minute Merc

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60-Second Business Break: Judge in antitrust case scolds Microsoft

2005-10-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

60-Second Business Break

60-SECOND BUSINESS BREAK

10/26/2005 03:00 PM PDT
Judge in antitrust case scolds Microsoft
By Frank Michael Russell, Mercury News Assistant Business Editor
Maybe they could just post big signs on the streets of Redmond, Wash., that say: Don't even think of forcing hardware makers into exclusive contracts here. Plus, Creative Technology sees lower Q3 profits; Amazon stock suffering; VeriSign buys Retail Solutions.

STORIES FROM TODAY'S MERCURY NEWS

S.J. will seek bids for WiFi plan - 10/26/2005 03:01 AM PDT
By Jessie Seyfer, Mercury News
Langberg: Visa offers behind-the-scenes credit security - 10/26/2005 03:01 AM PDT
By Mike Langberg, Mercury News
Google tests potential online ad listings - 10/26/2005 03:01 AM PDT
By Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, Mercury News
Consumers turn more pessimistic - 10/26/2005 03:01 AM PDT
By Anne D'Innocenzio, Associated Press
Businesses' flight from state mostly myth, new data shows - 10/26/2005 03:01 AM PDT
By Chris O'Brien, Mercury News

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SiliconValley.com - Good Morning Silicon Valley

2005-10-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

News | Columnists | Personal Technology | Markets | Venture Capital

Published: Wednesday October 26, 2005

Sounds great. Where do I upload eBay's business plan?

By JOHN PACZKOWSKI

So how did Google become the world's single largest marketplace? Paul Ford posed that question back in 2002 in a seminal essay entitled "August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web," and answered it by describing four services he saw Google naturally evolving toward: Google Marketplace Search, Google Personal Agent, Google Verification Manager, and Google Marketplace Manager. At the time it was written, Ford's essay seemed a well-reasoned bit of prognostication; reading it again last night, in light of Google's latest effort -- Google Base -- it seems so uncannily prescient, it might pass for the latest iteration of Google's business plan.

Expected to be introduced today at Google's invitation-only Zeitgeist conference (see "The first rule of The Google Partner Forum is, you do not talk about The Google Partner Forum. The second rule of The Google Partner Forum is, you DO NOT talk about The Google Partner Forum."), Google Base is a service that will allow people to submit listings about all manner of goods and services to a publicly searchable database maintained by Google. Analysts were quick to identify Google Base as an online marketplace that will put Google on a collision course with eBay, Craigslist and newspaper classified advertisements, and it most certainly is that. But it's quite a bit more as well. Along with typical classified ad fare, Google hypothesizes that one might upload "a database of protein structures," "original poetry," or "a research paper on cancer receptors." And that suggests to me that what we've really got here is a Web-based collaborative database application and self-publishing service, one that expands Google's lucrative listings business and its mindshare as well.

Parenthetical note: It is a measure of Google's omnipresence that these days, when one starts typing the letters "g-o-o," one's fingers almost automatically finish up with "g-l-e." So we completely understood the other day when Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch started a post this way: "Gary wrote earlier of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently denying any chair throwing at a conference, but Google Morning Silicon Valley highlighted another quote ..." (Once alerted, a slightly chagrined Sullivan wrote, "But John, it just sounds so much better. Google Morning Silicon Valley! Such a friendly sounding greeting. But I can understand the concern. Once Google owns everything and Silicon Valley becomes Google Valley, then Google Morning Google Valley would just sounds silly :)." Still, mysterious forces seem to be at work. Just the day before, reader Sean Toomey hinted at things to come with the attached reworking of GMSV's banner art.
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Q U O T E D

"Principally and philosophically, we are aligning with the notion that intellectual property should not be proprietarily owned by any commercial company."

-- Danielle Tiedt, general manager of search content acquisition at MSN, moments before being dragged into Bill Gates' office.
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"Red Planet," "Miss Congeniality" and "Daredevil"? Jail time is the least of his problems: Hong Kong resident Chan Nai-Ming earlier this week became the first person convicted for sharing copyrighted material over BitTorrent. Chan, who was was arrested in January after customs officers discovered he'd uploaded three movies -- "Red Planet," "Miss Congeniality" and "Daredevil" -- to a local BitTorrent discussion forum, was found guilty Monday by a local court of attempting to distribute an infringing copy of a copyrighted work. "The defendant loaded the files into his computer, he created the .torrent files, created the images of the inlay cards and imprinted them with his logo, the statuette; he published the existence of the .torrent files, and the names of the films in question, on the newsgroup," the magistrate who presided over the case said. "He said in effect, 'Come here to get this film if you want it'. His acts were an essential part of the downloading process and ... amounted to distribution." Chan was released on bail, but could face imprisonment for as long as four years when he's sentenced in November.
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Each store will be getting two dozen Xbox 360s, a security officer and a paramedic: Those console gaming fiends among you who've not yet ordered an Xbox 360 best hustle, because you may be hard pressed to find one when the machine finally arrives at market on November 22. Word around the campfire has it that inventory, even at retail outfits like Best Buy, will initially be quite small. And that may be understating the case; sources tell Kotaku that Best Buy stores can expect only 20 to 50 Xbox 360s each. Twenty to 50 machines for some of the biggest retail electronics outfits around? That's insane. Unless of course, someone else has laid claim to the bulk of your inventory, or you're trying to inflate demand by creating an artificial shortage right out of the gate.
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License "Business @ The Speed Of Thought" under Creative Commons? Bahahahahaha. Nice try, Brewster. Microsoft is following Google in the cagey business of offering online searches of books and other writings, although in a way that will avoid the criticism and legal hurly-burly that has plagued its rival. Redmond announced late Tuesday that it is joining the Open Content Alliance, a book digitization consortium led by Yahoo and Internet Archive that differs from Google's effort in that it is an opt-in program (see "You're welcome to use the library, but the yodeler stays outside"). Microsoft kicked off its participation in the project with a commitment to fund the digitization of 150,000 books in 2006. Impressive, no? News of Microsoft's decision comes just days after the Association of American Publishers sued Google in federal court seeking to stop its Google Library project (see "Google announces ambitious plan to digitize pending litigation"). Suffice to say, the publishing industry is much more supportive of the Open Content Alliance's approach, which allows copyright holders to decide whether and how their works will be copied. "The author or the publisher can decide if what Microsoft is offering is good for them," Pat Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers told the Seattle Post Intelligencer. "With Google, we have these billionaires saying, 'Look, we're just going to take it, this is going to be good for you, and you don't get it.' The law never says anywhere that I can take your stuff because what I'm going to do is really going to be good for you."
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"Happy to pay" may have been an overestimation ... Much as Rob Glaser would like to think otherwise, Apple views peer-to-peer, not Rhapsody and other services like it, as its greatest competitor in the music download market. Presiding over the launch of iTunes Australia (soon to be followed by ITMS New Zealand, apparently), Apple's iTunes vice president Eddy Cue, admitted that Limewire and BitTorrent do sometimes keep him up at night. "Our view is that our biggest competitor is illegal music and P2P services," Cue said. "We always thought that if we offered a better alternative, then those customers would be happy to pay. Obviously we will never be better than free but we think AU$1.69 is a very competitive and fair price to pay."
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Off topic: babycage.net and Extra Wheel

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Food & Wine: Surefire sauces you can make at home

2005-10-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

Food & Wine

TOP STORY

10/26/2005 08:48 AM PDT
Surefire sauces easy to make at home
By Cathy Thomas, Orange County Register
Many home cooks feel stymied when it comes to sauces to pair with meat or fish, poultry or vegetables. They may know the basics of grilling, roasting, stir-frying and steaming. But sauces make them shudder.

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Thai pumpkin soup - 10/26/2005 03:01 AM PDT
White bean, chicken and pumpkin chili - 10/26/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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Parcel 104's farm-fresh fare
Sheila Himmel, Mercury News
New American cuisine is served with a local twist at the stylish Parcel 104, a Bradley Ogden restaurant featuring fixed-price dinners.

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Surf-themed joint offers tacos, bargains
Aleta Watson, Mercury News
Wahoo's Fish Taco at Santana Row is jammed at lunchtime with people grabbing tacos, burritos and rice bowls at fast food prices.

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Mr. Roadshow: Parking hassle for Campbell light rail users

2005-10-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

Mr. Roadshow

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10/26/2005 01:32 AM PDT
Limited parking creates hassles for Campbell light rail users
By Gary Richards, Mercury News Staff Columnist
Q We decided to take light rail to the first Sharks game and save on gas and parking. However, it was after 6 p.m., and there was no parking available at the Winchester station. . . . My friends were on their way to the Tank for the Sharks first home game of the season. Hoping to pick up light rail in Campbell, they went early to find a parking space -- not even a possibility. They then searched for parking on the street -- again, nothing. So, as a last-ditch effort they parked in a remote area of...

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Roadshow: Should gas guzzlers pay more? No way such a tax would fly - 10/25/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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Roadshow: Angry motorists keep close tabs on suspected carpool cheats - 10/24/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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Don't be too quick to graduate children from car booster seats - 10/22/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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Roadshow: Transponders work on toll roads because lane access is limited - 10/21/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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Roadshow: Little hope for fix on Race Street signals; better find a new route - 10/20/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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A's Swisher flies into family's life - 10/20/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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5-Minute Merc: Pro skateboarder dies; S.J. OKs WiFi plan

2005-10-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

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60-Second Business Break: Profit up, but sales fall for Chiron

2005-10-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

60-Second Business Break

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10/25/2005 02:01 PM PDT
Profit up, but sales fall for flu-vaccine maker Chiron
By Frank Michael Russell, Mercury News Assistant Business Editor
Emeryville biotech company Chiron said its third-quarter profit was up 90 percent compared with a year ago because of fewer costs related to last year's halt of production of its Fluvirin flu vaccine. Plus, lower profit from Amazon; Wal-Mart and the double-edged minimum wage sword; Cisco makes Katrina donations; Google's China expansion.

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San Jose considers WiFi expansion - 10/25/2005 03:01 AM PDT
By Jessie Seyfer, Mercury News
Applicance store connects U.S., Mexican consumers - 10/25/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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Intel's new Itanium on hold - 10/25/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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Office space leases slowing - 10/25/2005 03:01 AM PDT
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SiliconValley.com - Good Morning Silicon Valley

2005-10-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

News | Columnists | Personal Technology | Markets | Venture Capital

Published: Tuesday October 24, 2005

No, that's the layout of the Halloween corn maze. This is the Itanium roadmap.

By JOHN PACZKOWSKI

Itanium customers who initially viewed Sun's Get off the "Itanic" promotion as little more than a smear campaign are today wondering if it wasn't prescient advice, after Intel said it is delaying three forthcoming revisions of the, ahem, "killer" chip. Originally scheduled to ship in early 2006, Intel's Montecito processor won't arrive until at least midyear, and when it does it will clock in at 1.6 gigahertz, not the 2 gigahertz Intel once promised. Intel also will delay a successor to Montecito, code-named Montvale, to 2007 from 2006. Tukwila, a third member of the seemingly cursed family, will now be ready in 2008 instead of 2007. These delays are yet another black eye for Intel as it seeks to maintain its lead in server chips over Advanced Micro Devices. And they do not bode well for the future. "Unless they can improve the performance of those chips, then they [Intel] suffer a double whammy -- they're late and the competition has moved on to higher performance," Insight64 analyst Nathan Brookwood told internetnews.com. "Late chips don't get faster, they get later."
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Q U O T E D

"People associate us with ... online peer-to-peer networks that swap digital music or movies illegally. But we uphold copyright laws. ... When someone shares a DVD with a friend on Napster, both end up with a copy. On Peerflix, the DVD is physically transferred from one person to another, so the quantity doesn't double."

-- Dan Robinson, co-founder of DVD trading outfit Peerflix, prepares his testimony for a forthcoming MPAA lawsuit.
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And now with this unfortunate disagreement behind us, we can get on with the important business of mismanaging the Internet: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet's domain name "management body" -- and I use that term loosely -- has finally settled its 18-month dispute with VeriSign, extending the company's contract to run the lucrative .com registry until 2012 in return for dropping an antitrust lawsuit against the nonprofit body. VeriSign, which enjoys a government granted monopoly over .com and .net addresses, sued ICANN back in 2004 after the agency spoke out against its SiteFinder technology (see "SiteFinder flap puts ICANN ineptitude to the test"), a service that hijacked people who misspelled domain names and sent them to a Web directory full of advertising. In its suit, VeriSign accused ICANN of overstepping its contractual authority and improperly attempting to regulate VeriSign's business (see "VeriSign sues for right to route all Internet traffic to itself"). A serious claim and one that's likely weighed heavily on ICANN in recent months, given the debate over U.S. vs. U.N. control of the Net. Little wonder, then, that it would up and settle its differences with VeriSign, even if it meant extending the company's monopoly on the .com registry. Certainly VeriSign's sudden recognition of ICANN's authority will come in handy when arguing that it, not the U.N., is best positioned to provide international oversight of the Internet. And really, who cares if the community of Internet users loses as long as you can keep attending those thrice yearly board meetings in places like Rio and Marrakesh?
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In recognition of your hard work, we'd like to present you with this offer of continued employment: The average information technology worker received a 3 percent raise this year. Those that got raises at all, that is. That sum is slightly below the 3.2 percent average raise received by other American workers, but IT folks aren't complaining. Why? Well, after the prolonged job insecurity that followed The Great Dark Time, most are just happy they still have jobs at all and would prefer not to see them outsourced. "All that special treatment that IT people were getting before just stopped -- the high pay raises, the special bonuses," David Van De Voort, global leader of the IT Workforce Effectiveness group at Mercer Human Resource Consulting LLC, told Computer World. "Many employers didn't even bother to explain it, and [employees] didn't squeal," for fear that their jobs might be outsourced to lower-paid workers.
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Tonight on "VH1: Where Are They Now?" The Motorola ROKR: "We got off to a little bit of a rough start. People were looking for an iPod and that's not what it is. We may have missed the marketing message there." That's what Motorola CEO Ed Zander had to say about the company's ballyhooed ROKR phone, which appears to be sinking like its namesake in the market for converged devices. According to American Technology Research, an exceedingly high percentage of customers who purchased the phone are exchanging it. "As many as six times more customers are returning the ROKR phones than is normal for new handset," ATR analyst Albert Lin told Bloomberg. "There's an overall disappointment with the product." I'll say. But honestly, what did they expect? With its slow syncing, artificial 100-track limit and ungainly design, the ROKR is a poor substitute for an iPod. And as a cell phone, it's less than astonishing. You're better off spending your money on a NAZR.
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Does the AppleCare policy cover chiropractor visits? If laptops get any bigger, we're going to have to start calling them desktops. Computer manufacturers are cranking out new portables with increasingly larger screens, and according to IDC, consumers like what they see. Indeed, the wide-screen format, found in a little more than a third of laptops expected to ship this year, is slowly but surely gaining on standard screen dimensions and is expected to eclipse them by the end of 2009. "What we are seeing is the commercial market driving the manufacturers," IDC analyst Richard Shim told News.com. "In addition to watching movies or playing games, customers are appreciating that wide-screen formats let them view documents and spreadsheets side-by-side instead of scrolling up and down."
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Off topic:The Khronos Projector, Old Glory Robot Insurance and Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back remade as animated GIFs

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