…The big question is timing-it will take a long time to overcome hurdles. But let’s hope financial services and health care gets upended by the Net. Both could use a revolution.

(Credit:
Gartner)

Analysts have already explained why they think the Internet is radically altering the economics of the media landscape. Now, Gartner’s Mark Stahlman and Michael McGuire say in a “maverick” presentation, healthcare and the financial services industry could well be next.

Click here for ongoing coverage from CNET News, “Tough times for tech”

For more on the Gartner conference, check out ZDNet’s full coverage here.

The financial markets may be in turmoil, but business goes on. How exactly it’s going on is a central theme at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Florida this week, as ZDNet Editor in Chief of ZDNet Larry Dignan reports

One thing is certain, ZDNet's Larry Dignan writes: Your CEO’s sleepless nights are likely to impact the technology department sooner rather than later.

Not surprisingly, in light of the ongoing economic mess, Gartner has revised its 2009 IT budget predictions, and the picture isn’t quite as dire as you may think. Why? IT folks have been through this before, and not so long ago.

Meanwhile, all this panic over the markets could see CEOs freaking out, and technology departments will be whipsawed as they try to keep up with new and occasionally conflicting demands.

It’s a bit of a stretch. Both financial services and healthcare are regulated and it’s not like some startup can just walk in and blow up business models. Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether digital natives can push things along. Those young folks are healthy so they’re not looking to change health care per se and they are broke so who cares about financial services…

It’s a point well taken, Dignan says, but–

“A lot of DoubleClick’s customers consider Google a competitor,” says Frank Addante, chief executive of The Rubicon Project, which offers a dashboard for sites to manage the more than 300 online ad networks. (Addante was formerly with L90/adMonitor advertising platform, which was bought by DoubleClick in 2001.)

“Display is more brand advertising, more emotional,” he says. “I think it’s going to take Google some time to learn that side of the business because they’re so data driven.”

“Now, if Google owns all the technology they have access to that data, they know what’s being bought and sold. It puts customers in a tough situation.” –Frank Addante, The Rubicon Project

“Our clients on DoubleClick that have contracts expiring with DoubleClick are saying it’s a dead end,” that it will be eclipsed by Google technology, which will impact customers, said Ruben Buell, chief executive of AdShuffle, an ad serving company.

There’s another conflict Google bumps up against with DoubleClick–the fact that it risks alienating publishers who don’t want Google to have too much control. Google could integrate DoubleClick’s Dart ad management and serving technology into AdWords to offer one unified dashboard and see into even more Web sites across the Internet.

And there’s the question of whether Google will continue to restrict its customers from working with third-party ad servers. “Advertisers working with Google couldn’t use third-party ad serving, so a lot of people wouldn’t use Google,” says Michael Cassidy, chief executive of online ad network Undertone Networks.

The merger “cements Google’s position as ‘frienemy’ with major publishers,” says Jim Barnett, chief executive of Turn, an automated online ad market.

Beyond the technical integration issues, the two merged companies face a culture clash. It’s “Madison Avenue hipsters” meets “Silicon Valley geek types,” according to Addante.

The $3.1 billion acquisition, which finally closed last week upon European regulator approval, gives Google a much needed boost in the market for display advertising.

There are some basic conflict-of-interest questions with some of the additions to Google. As the largest search engine, Google has kept its distance from search engine optimization, or SEO, which is the science of increasing a Web page’s rankings in search results. But with Performics, Google owns an SEO company.

“Now, if Google owns all the technology they have access to that data, they know what’s being bought and sold,” Addante says. “It puts customers in a tough situation.”

Now that Google has acquired DoubleClick–the display advertising feather in its proverbial cap–it’s time to see if the hat fits.

Google hasn’t offered many clues as to what its plans are with DoubleClick, other than to hint at layoffs. But Google pundits and executives at small ad outfits do have concerns and plenty of opinions about what the search king should do.

“Even if Performics is kept completely separate from the Google search team, there’s the impression that Performics might have some special ‘in’ with Google’s non-paid search results,” writes Danny Sullivan in a Search Engine Land blog post in which he urges Google to get rid of Performics.

Granted, Microsoft finds itself in the same SEO-owning boat after acquiring Avenue A/Razorfish and Sullivan poses this question to both companies: “You own the pie; do you really need to sell the pie cutters too?”

Google also has to figure out what the best business model is for ad serving. DoubleClick charges customers for it, but Google is testing a free ad management service called Ad Manager.

We just posted our review of Aperion’s new Intimus 5B Harmony SD home theater speakers, and the verdict is in: Aperion’s new system sounds seriously awesome. It’s got a new remote-controlled sub, with adjustable EQ, which we loved for changing sub levels on the fly without getting off the couch. But the real selling point is the system’s sonics, and resident Audiophiliac Steve Guttenberg gives it a strong recommendation. We had some quibbles–the biggest of which was the difficult subwoofer setup–but overall we were really impressed with performance and build quality of the Intimus 5b Harmony SD speaker system. And yes, they’re pricey at $1,750, but your money is well spent as they rival system speakers that cost far more.

Bottom line– the electronics and the in-air food ordering are fun, but not enough to make a difference for me. I will certainly consider Virgin America for future travel, but I’ll continue to choose airlines based on price, schedule, and compatibility with my existing frequent-flyer miles, as I’ve always done.

Virgin America also offers Ethernet and USB jacks at each seat, but these are currently useless. When I hooked up to the Ethernet jack, my laptop detected the connection, but didn’t receive an IP address, so there was no way to communicate over it. I can imagine this feature could be useful for business travelers who need to collaborate on some project during the flight, but until a DHCP server is provided, even peer-to-peer networking will likely not work.

The USB jack, allegedly provided to allow customers to recharge cellphones, iPods, and other USB devices (and, according to the on-board Welcome guide, to hook up a full-size keyboard for the in-flight entertainment system, an amusing notion), didn’t even provide power.

Although Virgin America flies to several West Coast destinations, I spend most of my time on this end of the country anyway. The two choices that seemed most attractive were New York and Washington, DC. Ultimately I decided I could have a better time in DC and not spend so much money, so that’s where I went.

Entrees– salad and sandwich type stuff, no hot food– were around $9; snacks were $1 to $2. These prices were competitive with those of airport shops, and it’s certainly more convenient to get the food onboard– but most airports offer more variety. A turkey-bacon wrap sandwich I ordered came without the expected accessories (napkin, mustard, etc.).

The party was a lot of fun, and all the sponsors did extensive giveaways. I got a flight suit from Intel and Zero G, a private company that offers “weightless” (parabolic trajectory) flights. Alas, I didn’t win a Zero G flight, but I did win a free flight on Virgin America. In fact, I think pretty much everyone at the party won one of these prizes– apparently they gave away 80 flights.

The airline charges $25 extra for “premium” seats at the bulkheads and exit rows in the main cabin. As a fairly tall guy, I like this idea– it discourages people from taking these seats if they don’t need them, and makes them more likely to be available for those of us who really need them.

I was able to get an exit-row seat on the return flight, but not on the flight out. The seat pitch in the main cabin is adequate for moderately tall people such as myself, but only barely. It’s about like American Airlines, which is the airline I usually fly on.

Coming up next, a few museum reviews! I spent most of my time in DC doing the usual touristy stuff, and I ran across a chunk of ENIAC, the world’s first general-purpose digital computer, in an unexpected place…

Virgin America seems to have learned some valuable lessons from the success of JetBlue on these transcontinental flights. Virgin provides fairly comfortable leather seats in the main cabin and attractive leather massage chairs in first class. The airline’s Airbus airplanes (my flights were on A320s) are attractively decorated inside with color-changing “mood lighting” (which remained set to blue and purple on my flights).

A Virgin America A320 Airbus aircraft

(Credit:
Virgin America)

The system can also be used to order food, which seems like a great idea, assuming it doesn’t run the cabin crew ragged. Some of the things you can order are free, like sodas, but most items are sold to generate additional revenue. Accordingly, “Eat” buttons are easy to find on the wired remote control and the on-screen menus.

I had to pay $21 in fees for the flight, and I chose to pay $25 extra for an exit-row seat, but the discount still amounted to $277.20. Normally I’d say such a meager amount wouldn’t influence my posts here, but it’s probably the case that I wouldn’t be writing about Virgin America otherwise…

In a way, this story is left over from CES 2008, where I attended a blogger party hosted by the Parnassus Group and sponsored by, among other companies, Virgin America, the US domestic airline counterpart to Virgin Atlantic.

When watching the pre-recorded content, there are pause, rewind, and fast-forward controls. These functions aren’t available for the live broadcasts– no in-air DVR yet, sorry.

I also appreciated the live flight map based on data from Google Maps, although it doesn’t offer a satellite view or a really close-up view of the road maps. It seems to me that these features would be useful, but I suppose that providing them would require much more on-board storage. The map can pop up over whatever TV show you’re watching, which makes it convenient to check the progress of the flight during commercials. There was an odd problem with this feature– the black pixels on the map overlay were actually transparent, so legends on the map (city names, etc.) were intermittently illegible depending on the TV image. This function worked well on the flight to DC, but was not reliable on the flight back. Even after we landed at SFO, the system showed the airplane was a few miles southwest of the airport.

The free flight coupon, which was good for one round trip in the main cabin (that is, coach class) anywhere Virgin flies in the US, was valid through the end of May, so when Montalvo Systems shut down in early April I was able to spend some time planning a trip.

Virgin provides a high-quality multimedia entertainment system with a 9″ touchscreen LCD at every seat. The system, called Red, carries 24 channels of live satellite TV (sourced from Dish Network), 20 channels of live satellite radio, a good variety of on-demand TV shows and music, movies, simple games, and even chat rooms. I checked frequently but never found anyone in the chat rooms on the way out; on the way back, this feature was disabled.

I was pleased to see that the music videos and some of the pre-recorded TV shows and movies are offered free of charge. For example, I found several of the TED Talks and an episode of Patrick Norton’s Tekzilla (an old one– episode 17 from January 2008).

Buying the ticket on the Virgin America website was pretty easy once I figured out that the site requires customers to apply discount codes in advance rather than also accepting discount codes when paying for a flight.

The system has menu options called “Read” and “Shop”, but they were not active. It seems to me that unavailable options ought not to be displayed.

The Dish Network channels are standard definition, not HD, but are stretched to fill the widescreen LCDs, which I find annoying. The broadcasts didn’t come through reliably; on both flights, there were long periods when some of the channels were experiencing trouble, even in level flight at our cruising altitude under a clear sky. Sharp turns caused the satellite receiver to fail entirely, but I suspect there’s no good way to solve that problem. On the return flight, four of the channels (ESPN, ESPN Classic, BET, and BBC America) were carrying Dish informational programming instead of the intended content.

One of the most valuable features on board– to me, at least– was the provision of two 110V outlets for each set of three seats in the main cabin. (Presumably the folks in first class get one each.) Finally, there’s a legal way to power and recharge my laptop in flight. The DC outlets found on some airlines won’t charge a MacBook Pro, although they do let the machine operate without running down the battery further. Virgin’s AC outlets are oriented horizontally, rather than the usual vertical arrangement in most wall outlets, which made for a fragile connection to the MacBook Pro’s power adapter, which frequently fell out.

Sales in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, for example, increased by 26 percent, while Asia Pacific shipments grew 11 percent.

“Despite a softening global economy, we delivered solid gains in worldwide sales,” Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo chairman, said in a statement.

The computer maker reported revenues climbed to $4.2 billion in the quarter ending June 30, up from $3.8 billion a year ago. Shipments of PCs climbed 14.6 percent for the quarter.

Lenovo posted earnings of $1.25 a share for the quarter, up from 78 cents the previous year.

The Americas, however, continued to be affected by a weak economic environment, the company stated.

Gutmann wanted to point out that he had, in fact, responded to Ou some time ago here.

Again, the Macalope will point out that he’s not qualified to judge who’s got the technical high ground here, but it does make for interesting reading.

Peter Gutmann of A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection fame emailed the Macalope (during the heat of Macworld Expo, so apologies for the delay) to respond to a piece the brown and furry one wrote a while back confirming the only piece of Gutmann’s story he was qualified to make a judgement on:

That, on any given day, George Ou is not exactly traversing through a fully linked list.

UPDATE: In comments, George Ou takes exception to what he believes are Gutmann’s insinuations that he sent him obscenity-laden emails. It’s unclear if he’s denying he sent the emails at all, he just seems to be saying he didn’t send them to Gutmann and he thinks Gutmann is misrepresenting his loutish behavior with others as loutish behavior with him. Duly noted, George!

Keep in mind, eTec does not manufacture the type of electric car battery you would find in a plug-in hybrid car like a Toyota Prius, but rather for those found in slower, lightweight off-road electric vehicles. Still, the project, if successful, could provide an immediate application for construction and utility companies that already rely on fleets of light PHEVs.

Even the confident Department of Energy announced in mid-June that it’s giving $30 million to several car companies and research institutes to further develop hybrid plug-in car technology. Some of that funding is earmarked specifically for research on battery packs and charging systems.

The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), with sponsorship from General Motors and others, has also announced that it has a grant to study what effects a multitude of PHEVs being charged during peak electricity hours might have on Michigan’s state electric grid.

Ecotality is best known for the Hydratus, its onboard hydrogen fuel generator for buses, that grew out of a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory project. Its subsidiary, eTec, makes chargers for rechargeable lithium ion and lead acid batteries used in electric light-construction vehicles.

A project funded by the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory will test bidirectional battery chargers and “smart” grids that could prevent U.S. electric grid overload from plug-in vehicles.

A company called V2Green has developed a “smart” electric grid that allows charging stations to control the flow of electricity between plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) batteries and an electric grid. Working with V2Green and its system, eTec plans to test the strain that bidirectional fast charging might have on the life of PHEV batteries.

Karner said the data gathered on bidirectional fast-charging for recharging facilities, as well as on electric utilities, could lay “the foundation for the development of a public fast-charging infrastructure for on-road electric vehicles.”

While the U.S. Department of Energy has said it’s confident it can handle a plethora of plug-ins, many still wonder what kind of strain will be put on the U.S. power infrastructure once consumers tap into it as a fuel source to recharge cars.

The goal is to develop a system that would essentially allow plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, in conjunction with battery-charging stations, to store energy at charging stations so they could recharge in 10 minutes at any time, taking from the electric grid during off-peak hours and giving electricity to the grid during peak hours.

The city of San Jose, Calif., announced on Tuesday that it will begin testing electric car charging stations developed by start-up Coulomb Technologies.

Through this project, eTec will test battery-charging technology that could eventually be used to mitigate the anticipated strain on the U.S. electric grid from plug-in hybrid
cars, the company announced Tuesday.

“Not only does this project demonstrate the ability to fast-charge a PHEV in 10 minutes, but it also highlights the additional benefit of fast-charging systems for managing facility energy consumption,” Don Karner, the president and CEO of eTec, said in a statement.

It also affects one’s blood pressure to see the chap in the waistcoat on the breakfast show “Tokudane”, continually tap a file, then the Windows logo, then any and every part of the screen in a vain attempt to make for a little exciting television.

However, the fine Japanese news source, Japan Probe, was itself somewhat discombobulated by these two seemingly unrelated incidents of Windows 7 opacity.

However, I have been watching these two pieces of film from Japan with some small prick of concern.

I feel fairly confident that it will not turn hairy users bald, nor cause sane users to enter institutions of mental restructuring.

In each we see a television personality attempting to enjoy the touch screen facility and, well, finding the screen as frigid as a beer in a Reykjavik bar.

Indeed, one of his fellow televisual employees scuttles up and crouches down in front of the screen and tries to help him out. Yet still his screen finger skills bear as much fruit as, well, some fingers that attempted to make sense of Vista.

I don’t speak Japanese quite well enough beyond “watashiwa kekong shtemasen” (no, I am not married) to know what is being said.

I feel fairly confident that
Windows 7 will turn out to better than its predecessor.

However, I will be eagerly scouring the Web for sales figures from Japan.

But there is something disconcerting about seeing the rather serious gentleman in the beige jacket and imposingly expensive watch fail to expand his view of the world. His face is so unbearably fixed, as if it too has been frozen in sympathy with what is happening on the screen.

I am sure these were isolated incidents caused by inferior configuration or some kind of digital unfamiliarity.

I should say that both these clips appear to come from Fuji TV, so I hope that they didn’t manage to obtain a rather duff copy of the operating system.

]]> http://www.23record.com/?feed=rss2&p=323 0 http://www.23record.com/?p=321 http://www.23record.com/?p=321#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:05:20 +0000 admin http://www.23record.com/?p=321 As for the outlook for the current quarter, which stretches through September, analysts are currently expecting earnings of 49 cents per share, on revenue of $15 billion. It will be interesting to see where Microsoft’s forecast comes in, as well as what it has to say about the broader economy and IT spending in particular.

Expect analysts to push for some more details on Microsoft’s plans to significantly boost Windows marketing, particularly as Apple is gaining not only mindshare with its anti-Vista ads, but also market share.

And of course, folks will be hanging on every word regarding Yahoo, AOL and anyone else Microsoft is thinking about buying. I would expect company officials to have only the expected things to say, that they are still interested in transactions that would accelerate their growth, strong go-it-alone strategy, etc. More interesting will be if they give any of the investment levels that go-it-alone strategy will entail.

Here’s another thing I’m going to be watching–piracy rates. Last quarter, the company noted an uptick in piracy rates after making some significant gains. With Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft also made life for pirates somewhat less onerous.

We’ll have the earnings report just as soon as its out, as well as some insight ahead of the earnings conference call and then frequent updates once the call gets underway.

While much attention these days has centered around whether Microsoft will buy a big name to boost its online business, expect a lot of attention on Thursday to focus on the areas where Microsoft actually earns money.

The Windows business in particular will get attention after showing less than stellar results last quarter. Microsoft has forecast its Windows client unit will show between 7 percent and 11 percent growth for the quarter.

Overall, Microsoft said in April to expect earnings of 45 cents to 48 cents per share on revenue of $15.5 billion to $15.8 billion. (First Call has analysts pegging earnings at 47 cents per share, on revenue of $15.7 billion.)

Like its fixed-lens, handheld counterparts, the XH A1 and XH G1, the XL H1 now splits into two personalities: the $8,999 H1S, which, like the original H1, will come replete with the HD SDI, Genlock, and SMPTE timecode support necessary for operation in a multicam environment when it ships this June, and the H1A, which eschews those features to save you about $3,000. The one possible drawback to the H1A is that it’s not upgradeable to the H1S, if that’s a consideration for you. Offering the less-expensive model is a smart (and possibly long overdue) move on Canon’s part, putting the shoulder-mount, interchangeable-lens HD camcorder in people’s hands this July for a still-not-cheap $5,999.

If you’ve been waiting for something revolutionary to replace Canon’s two-year-old XL H1 HDV model, then it’s not quite time for the fireworks. Instead, the company’s delivering a modestly enhanced version in conjunction with a feature-reduced, but significantly less expensive spin-off.

Basic specs remain the same. They use three 1.67-megapixel, 16:9-aspect, 1/3-inch CCDs coupled with the Digic DVII image processor, and the lens is still a 20x zoom with Canon’s SuperRange optical image stabilization system. For both models, Canon concentrated on improving the H1’s usability and adding more granularity to the controls. The lens especially has been upgraded. Though it uses the same optics, Canon has addressed user complaints about its operational feel and responsiveness and increased the iris adjustability to 1/16-stop increments from 1/4-stop. They also include increased gain and white balance ranges, selective-color noise reduction, and more color adjustments. Though the camcorders drop from 4-channel to 2-channel audio, it now supports simultaneous on-camera and XLR mic inputs.

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(Credit: Canon USA)

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