*michael parekh on IT*

ON MORE SICK MACS SOON

APPLE A DAY

As Apple's Mac computers continue to gain share in the mainstream market for PCs and laptops, the days of Mac users not having to worry about computer viruses may be coming to an end.  This technical note on Apple's site reminds users for the first time:

"Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult. Here are some available antivirus utilities:

• Intego VirusBarrier X5, available from the Apple Online Store, License: commercial
  

• Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh, available from the Apple Online Store, License: commercial
• McAfee VirusScan for Mac License: commercial"

As BoyGeniusReport noted today:

"Last month we told you about two new pieces of OS X malware that had been discovered and while neither poses a significant threat in most people’s eyes, it is clearly a sign of things to come."

Who knows, Apple may even have to revise this ad they ran against Windows PCs a while ago:
With greater market share, come greater headaches, both for Apple and it's customers.
*Image Source.

ON A WHOLE NEW TYPE OF LAPTOP

DOUBLING UP

Listphobia has brought together 10 futuristic concept laptop designs in one place.  The one that most catches my attention is the first one, a design for a dual-screen laptop of sorts, by Canova.  Here's how they describe it:

Canova Dual Screen Laptop possesses two screens, a multi sensitive touch screen and is very easy to use.

Not only can it be used to handle your daily computing tasks but it also lets you read articles on your laptop in the old-school newspaper fashion.

Who knows, something like this, hopefully a bit thinner, and presumably at affordable mainstream prices, with inexpensive and ubiquitous wireless broadband, might even give the newspaper, book, magazine, and TV businesses a fighting chance in the future.

ON A FUN LITTLE iPHONE APP

BY THE NUMBERS

This new iPhone App called Math Tricks caught my eye, given my inner math geek.  Here's how it's developer Ken describes it:

"Impress your friends and amaze your teachers! You’ll be surprised at how quickly and easily that you will be able to compute such large figures in your head! Math Tricks is an interactive and fun way to, not only learn, but also to boost your skills.
This mental workout takes you through every problem and gives you step-by-step tricks to improve your speed and accuracy. It offers an easy to understand chalkboard visual, which keeps track of your "score" as you progress.

Math Tricks is perfect for long drives, flights, and waiting in lines. It's excellent for all ages (only knowledge of multiplication is necessary) and all skill levels as it allows you to select a specific category or from all seven lessons."

He's even prepared a YouTube video that shows the $0.99 program in action

The program reminds me of Vedic Math from a while back.  But it's done on a slick iPhone app, and is fun to use.  Check it out if you're looking forward from the usual iPhone game fare.

ON THE HORSE-RACE FOR NETBOOKS

OUT OF THE GATE

PC World reports that there may be an upset in the race for global primacy in Netbooks, the new hot thing in computers*:

"Acer, the world's third-largest PC vendor, said shipments of its Aspire one netbook could reach 6 million units this year, which would edge out Asustek Computer's popular Eee PC at the top of the market.

Asus has set a target for Eee PC shipments this year of 5 million, which would be a million shy of the lead if Acer meets its target.

The defeat may not be easy for Asus to accept since the company has largely been responsible for popularizing the netbook idea commercially with the Eee PC.

Asus launched the Eee PC late last year to great fanfare at its small size and price. The least expensive Eee PC at the time came with a 7-inch screen and an NT$7999 (US$240) price tag."

Netbooks have taken the mainstream PC world by storm in recent months, with every major participant, including HP and Dell, already selling Netbooks, and having an aggressive roll-out plan for new Netbooks in coming months.

These new computers are a key reason why Asus and Acer are catching up mainstream PC vendors like HP and Dell, as this internetnews piece indicates:

"Taiwan's Acer surged past global champion Hewlett-Packard in European personal computer sales in the third quarter, in the clearest sign of the move toward cheap, small mini-notebook computers, research firm Gartner said on Tuesday."

Worldwide PC shipments rose 15 percent in the quarter, with HP (NYSE: HPQ) in the lead, followed by Dell.

The July-September period was marked by strong growth in the lower-cost mini-notebook category, which Acer has been focusing on, Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa said. This helped bolster the overall PC market in he face of slumping consumer spending.

...less than 5 percent of overall PC shipments are mini-notebooks, but she said the market seems to be growing.

Overall, worldwide PC shipments rose 15 percent from last year to 80.6 million units. At the same time, U.S. shipments rose 4.6 percent to 17.4 million units.

HP shipped 14.8 million units in the quarter, for a market share of 18.4 percent, barely changed from a year ago. Dell was in second place with a share of 13.6 percent, down 0.5 percent from last year, while Acer's piece of the market jumped to 12.5 percent from 9.7 percent."

"Apple of course is the one company without an entry in this segment, despite a PC market share approaching 10% of the US market for the first time in it's history.  As this other PC World article reports:

Apple accounted for nearly 10% of all U.S. computer sales last quarter, but the lack of a model in the growing netbook category could mean trouble ahead, a research analyst said Wednesday.

According to Gartner Inc.'s preliminary estimates, Apple sold 1.64 million machines during the period, a 29% increase year-to-year over the same period in 2007, to put it in third place behind Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. For the quarter, Apple accounted for 9.5% of all the machines sold in the U.S, up from 8.1% a year ago and 8.5% last quarter."

It's still early in this market for low-cost computers, and the picture gets more complex when you consider that smartphones like the iPhone and others, are increasingly capable of doing many of the things that Netbooks do today.  This is a point that Steve Jobs himself made on a recent Apple analyst call:

Jobs acknowledged that there are segments of the market that the company serves, and some it does not. Netbooks are apparently part of the latter. "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that," Jobs said..."

"You know one of our entrants into that category, if you will, is the iPhone, for browsing the Internet and doing email doing all the things that a netbook lets you do. And can be connected via the celluar net wherever you are. The iPhone is a pretty good solution for that, and it fits in your pocket. But we'll wait and see how that nascent market evolves, and we have some pretty good ideas if it does."

The PC Magazine piece went on to add

"Incidentally, Apple sold 6.9 million iPhones during the quarter -- more than the company had sold during the entire lifespan of the iPhone"

Looked at it in that light, Netbooks have come a long way, being "junk" or not.  Both Asus and Acer are approaching unit volumes individually that Apple's done in a quarter with the iPhone.  And that's something that likely has not missed Apple's attention.

*Image source.

ON HARNESSING SOCIAL NETWORKS

CONNECTING THE DOTS

The Guardian has an interesting piece on how today's social network technologies may be leveraged for government sponsored Homeland Security/Military applications:

"...a group of scientists and military officers...have helped build a new social analytics tool that identifies and automatically uncovers intelligence to help military personnel perform better in the field.

SRI International based in Menlo Park, California, teamed up with military officers to build a new social analytics tool called iLink that generates models and helps streamline the process by which a specific expert in an online community can be found.

In simple terms, iLink is a machine learning-based system that models users and content in a social network and then points the user to relevant content."

The article goes on to explain how this work is already being re-tasked for consumer and business social networks:

"Looking beyond the military, the applications for this kind of smart social networking technology are broad and diverse. The two SRI scientists are planning to spin off the technology into a startup to be called Social Kinetics. The team is currently working on a healthcare application.

And with the demand for social networking growing – estimates for social networking users in the US alone by 2012 is expected to hit 92.2 million, according to In-Stat's Hitwise research service – the commercial benefits to businesses and individuals could be immense."

Looks like we may have the basis of making social networks a whole lot more useful for mainstream users.

ON BUSINESSES GOING GREEN

SOONER OR LATER?

The technology industry, especially the enterprise-focused hardware companies, have been doing their utmost of late to re-tool their products and services for the perceived holy grail of new, "green" markets.  An example of this is IBM's Green project initiative launched in the middle of last year:

"In May this year the firm launched its $1bn Big Green Project campaign focusing on ways it could reduce energy consumption.

Technologies which IBM touted last month included liquid cooling solutions, virtualization systems and power management, all of which it hopes to integrate into the new facility.

Data centres have been notorious for consuming vast quantities of power, as well as pushing out large chunks of carbon emissions to keep the beasts ticking over."

You may have seen several commercials IBM has been running to convince it's target market, the enterprise CIOs (Chief Information Officers), of the merits in investing in "green hardware, software and services.  This one is a good example:

It's an uphill climb, as other companies in the industry with similar recent initiatives, like Dell, have found.  This piece in the Register yesterday is a case in point:

"Dell has admitted it won't earn much return on the energetic greening of its operations and products, until CIOs get paid to have greener data centres.

Michael Dell, Dell's founder, chairman and CEO, said in a briefing with journalists in London today, that the underlying interest in green matters is growing at a fast pace.

But he added: "CIOs say the energy cost is 'not in my budget'."

That means that Dell, after a breakneck rush to green its product range, is offering products to CIOs who do not yet have an incentive to buy them.

Dell thinks "this is changing. CIOs are being held accountable." Asked if, when CIOs do get an energy budget responsibility, Dell would be there waiting, he said simply: "Yes."

These markets take a long time to turn around to new trends and opportunities.  Here's hoping in this instance that the market catches up with the vendors some point soon.

ON CONNECTING WITH MICROSOFT AGAIN (Part II)

MIXED NEWS

A few days ago I'd posted about Microsoft $300 million ad campaign, with Jerry Seinfeld as a key $10 million spokesman.  Well, it looks like there may be a change in plans there, as Valleywag reports:

"Remember those awful Microsoft ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates? Well, now you can forget them. Microsoft flacks are desperately dialing reporters to spin them about "phase two" of the ad campaign — a phase, due to be announced tomorrow, which will drop the aging comic altogether. Microsoft's version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is..."

Looks like Microsoft IS going a different direction at the New York Times reports:

"What follows is an audacious embrace of the disdainful label that Apple, Microsoft’s rival, has gleefully — and successfully — affixed onto users of Microsoft products: “I’m a PC.”

There's a full discussion on Techmeme if you want to delve into the implications of this latest Microsoft/Apple battle.

It's too bad...I was actually looking forward to the third commercial featuring Seinfeld and Gates, since the second one.  As I said a few days ago:

"This commercial is a lot better than the first in the series in my view.  It works in an odd sort of way as a 4 minute and 30 second pilot of a sitcom idea featuring two retired icons in their respective fields, doing a road trip to "connect" with ordinary people in any given episode."

Maybe they can release the rest of the commercials already finished but not released up on YouTube, kind of as a keepsake for the rest of us.

There is some better news for Microsoft on an unrelated front against Apple though, as this review of the new David Pogue indicates.  Although David still loves the new Technicolor iPod Nano released recently by Apple, he does like the Zune for the following reasons:

"for hard-core music lovers, it’s a gem. The Zune blows the iPod off the map in music discovery and downloading..."

The catch is that one has to subscribe to a $15/month music subscription service from Microsoft.  The benefit though is as follows:

"For example, every Zune has a built-in FM radio. When you hear a good song, you can click the center button to capture it, provided it’s a station that broadcasts song-title data.

In a Wi-Fi hot spot, the Zune downloads the song from the Zune store immediately. When you get home, the downloaded song gets copied back to your PC. (Even wirelessly, if you like, because the Zune can sync over Wi-Fi.)

It’s addictive, awesome and completely natural. What better way to discover new performers and songs than listening to the radio?"

Maybe Microsoft can make an ad about that feature, what do you think?

ON CONNECTING WITH MICROSOFT AGAIN

REVIVAL TOURS

Imagine if Steve Case and Jerry Seinfeld paired up to star in a $300 million advertising campaign, played out over several months, with the specific goal of convincing customers both old and new that AOL is the best new old online service on the internet.  Would you bite?

That's what came to mind as I watched Bill Gates and Seinfeld starring in the second commercial in the $300 million ad campaign by launched by Microsoft, to "connect" with real computer users again.  Oh, and to make PCs seem as relevant and cool to today's users as Apple's Mac.

This commercial is a lot better than the first in the series in my view.  It works in an odd sort of way as a 4 minute and 30 second pilot of a sitcom idea featuring two retired icons in their respective fields, doing a road trip to "connect" with ordinary people in any given episode.

If you're curious what other geeks think of this ad and campaign, check out the discussion on Techmeme.  I did like the tag line of the commercial "Perpetually Connecting", if only for the wistfulness of a nice dream to have.

But watching the commercial the second time around, it only brought to mind how old brands in technology strive to make themselves relevant again.

This piece by Saul Hansell at the New York Times taking a look at why people still use AOL brings the point home with a vengeance.

Is Microsoft on it's way to being tomorrow's AOL? And what can they do about it besides making commercials?

ON DIGITIZING NEWSPAPERS ONLINE

OLD NEWS ANEW

Speaking of newspapers and technology,  Google's introduction of a newspaper archival service at the bustling TechCrunch50 Conference in San Francisco yesterday is a notable service for any news junkie.  This TechCrunch article provides good background:

" Marissa Mayer just demoed the new Google News Archive search onstage at TechCrunch50. The news archives will run contextual ads from Google AdSense, which will be split with the newspaper publishers.

Google is launching with millions of articles, to which it will add to as time goes one. The service will also try to drive print subscriptions."

The service has a cool interface, and there's something really cool about seeing old microfiche copies of archived newspapers in a web browser.  The technology applied is pretty impressive, with every item of interest in the paper being auto-magically turned into a blue-tinted web-link.  This excerpt from the Google announcement explains:

"Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all."

While many of the results that pop up in a search query do carry per article charges by the newspaper in question, a lot of content is free.  Hopefully more of the archival content moves to an ad-based free model over time.  The service overall is an important step forward in "organizing the world's information".  Well done, Google.

P.S. I'm attending TechCrunch50.  If you're at the conference too, and would like to say hi, drop me a line.

ON REVISITING DIGITAL NEWSPAPERS

ARE WE THERE YET?

As an enthusiastic early adopter of the electronic reading devices like the Amazon Kindle and Sony eReader, I found this New York Times article on these devices extending to newspapers to be of interest.  It starts off discussing a topic that's long been on the wish-lists of geeks everywhere.  The device is pictured on the left, with the Sony and Amazon devices in the middle and on the right:

"The electronic newspaper, a large portable screen that is constantly updated with the latest news, has been a prop in science fiction for ages. It also figures in the dreams of newspaper publishers struggling with rising production and delivery costs, lower circulation and decreased ad revenue from their paper product.      

While the dream device remains on the drawing board, Plastic Logic will introduce publicly on Monday its version of an electronic newspaper reader: a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look — but not the feel — of a printed newspaper.

The device, which is unnamed, uses the same technology as the Sony eReader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E Ink Corporation. While both of those devices are intended primarily as book readers, Plastic Logic’s device, which will be shown at an emerging technology trade show in San Diego, has a screen more than twice as large. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents."

This device won't be ready for sale until early next year.

The piece then goes on to provide a time-line on how current technology may evolve:

"The ideal format, a flexible display that could be rolled or folded like a newspaper, is still years off, says E Ink. But it foresees color displays with moving images and interactive clickable advertising coming in only a few more years, according to Sriram K. Peruvemba, vice president for marketing for E Ink.

E Ink expects that within the next few years it will be able to create technology that allows users to write on the screen and view videos. At a recent demonstration at E Ink’s headquarters here, the company showed prototypes of flexible displays that can create rudimentary colors and animated images. “By 2010, we will have a production version of a display that offers newspaperlike color,” Mr. Peruvemba said."

The article goes on to describe issues beyond the technology that'll make and break the mainstream adoption of the devices, primarily the business models that need to be win-win for all the constituents involved. At this point, it may be realistic to say that we may be well into the early adopter phase of this trend in half a decade.  Not that far away in the big scheme of things.