January 2006 Archives

When it comes to stocks, Wall Street doesn't care who you are, whether you do evil (here or anywhere else in the world) or even if the name of your company has been turned into a verb. When you miss earnings, you pay the price.

Search engine giant Google became acquainted with this cold, hard fact Tuesday after announcing fourth-quarter earnings that fell well short of analysts' forecasts.

Despite reporting an increase in Q4 profit of 82 percent on the back of its online ad business, Google's net income of $1.54 per share (excluding various charges including stock option expenses) was way off the $1.76 per share expected by the street.

The earnings announcement was made after Tuesday's trading close, when Google finished at $432.66, up 1.4 percent from Monday. But after-hours action saw a selloff frenzy, with GOOG shares plunging below $360, their lowest price since late last October, before ending the late session at $381.10.

Two things in particular ate into Google's net earnings: a higher-than-expected tax rate and heavy expenditures on infrastructure and R&D. And let's not overlook the cost of maintaining a top-notch censorship program in China.

Just kidding on that last one.

Given that some analysts have set price targets for Google as high as $500 per share, don't be surprised if the stock bounces back to $400 soon as investors buy on weakness.

Remember when file-sharing pioneer Napster was looking like music-industry roadkill?

Now, thanks to rumors of either a partnership with or sale to search giant Google, shares of the former song-copyright renegade soared today as high as 59 percent above Monday's $3.12 close.

And the volume was just insane: more than 50 million shares, compared to the paltry three-month daily average of 659,794.

Google this afternoon denied it has plans to purchase Napster or even start a music store. NAPS shares flatlined as the market closed, finishing at $3.83, up 23 percent from Monday.

Still, this sudden investor interest is a far cry from just a week ago when, as Red Herring explains, "Napster had to fend off rumors of widespread layoffs and potential plans for liquidation."

JupiterResearch analyst David Card expressed some doubts to the tech/business publication about how well the rumored marriage would work:

"[Google doesn't] have many services where the consumers pay. Video is the first one with a mass audience, so I'm not sure they're good at that yet."

Back in the fall I was writing about using search engines and software tools to track the online reputation of your organization and its products. Another survey is out that shows again how important it is to have an informative Web presence and good online PR.

The survey comes from the Polk Center for Automotive Studies, and it asked a total of 366 first-time vehicle buyers (ages 18-30) from across the United States about their experience buying a vehicle for the first time.

I remember going to the library with my dad when I was a kid and he was looking for a new car. There, he'd grab a copy of Consumer Reports and photocopy the pages that interested him. And the iPod generation?

Out of considered mass media outlets, thirty-five percent of first-time vehicle buyers consider the Internet to be their most important informational tool, compared to 8.2
percent for television, 4.4 percent for magazines, 3.6 percent for newspapers
and 1.1 percent for radio.

The next big thing for auto companies will be mobile media technology, according to Lonnie Miller, managing director for the Polk Center for Automotive Studies. But here's a quote that deserves attention:

"Generation Y is tuning out traditional advertising, and
watching what they want, when they want. Creating breakthrough content and
developing relationships with customers through emerging media technologies
will separate the winners from the losers in the next five years."

It's news like this that has traditional media companies scrambling. Today the New York Times has word of a re-organization at Time Inc. (free registration required) that will let it re-allocate assets to expand its online business.

Thanks to Shore Communications for the link.

The SANS 2005 Information Security Salary and Career Advancement Survey is out, and it covers everything from compensation to how degrees and certifications impact IT security salaries and job satisfaction.

The median income, including salary and bonus, for all IT security professionals in the U.S. is $81,558, according to the survey (PDF file), which was conducted in October and November of 2005. In the U.K. and Canada it's slightly lower.

Certifications do pay more; as do large employers. Salaries vary by industry, with large corporations paying more. IT and Utilities lead the way, with healthcare and education brining up the rear.

But what makes IT security professionals happy? The respondents were asked to choose from eight main themes to answer "the single best thing your employer does to make you enjoy working."

They chose:

Trust (including autonomy, freedom, respect and independence): 27.7%

Working hours and balance between work and other parts of life: 11.6%

Compensation (raises, benefits, perks, bonuses): 11.0%

When asked "the single worst thing your employer does that makes working no fun at all" they chose:

Problems in management and leadership including lack of vision and micromanagement: 20.2%

Long/undesirable working hours: 9.9%

Low compensation (including raises): 8.4%

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for the link.

In the past three years, I made two trips to San Jose. One of them I even turned into a short vacation, visiting San Francisco, Monterrey, and some of the really big trees in between. I even visited relatives in San Jose itself and went out for dinner. But at no point was I made aware there was a tech museum in San Jose. Apparently, I'm not alone.

The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose is having trouble drawing visitors. The Tech, as it's apparently called, isn't in danger of having the lights turned off, but it isn't getting the crowds it once did.

Museum officials had expected things to turn around in 2005. Instead, the Tech suffered one of its toughest years. Attendance dipped, despite the debut of three new exhibits, and is less than half the level of 1999. The museum posted an operating deficit last year and cut 20 jobs. Its longtime leader retired. A permanent successor was named after a long search but won't be in place until April.

Soon after the museum opened, there was the tech downturn. Then the Sept. 11 attacks cut into travel and tourism. The biggest issue of all seems to be the lack of visitors beyond school-aged children.

Maybe technology so permeates life in Silicon Valley people don't want to deal with it in their leisure time.

I have a friend whose father-in-law could be described as "eccentric."

Bothered by the amount of heat emanating from his old laptop, the father-in-law devised a unique solution: Everywhere he went with his portable machine he also carried with him a bag of ice, upon which he would place his computer when using it.

Eventually he gave up on this practice, defeated by the logistical burden and an increasing numbness in his thighs.

I am reminded of this by HP's Modular Cooling System (MCS), which goes on sale next week and is designed to solve server rack heating problems.

It's not a new idea, but as this CNET story explains:

Liquid cooling...is experiencing a comeback because of new technology challenges. Processors are consuming more electricity and being packed more densely, and electricity costs to pay for that power and for air conditioning have been increasing.

HP has details here explaining how its cooling system works. Essentially, it recirculates within a server rack air that is cooled by the water system.

However, it's not quite a "self-cooled rack," as HP's press release describes it. Rather, the MCS must be hooked up to a chilled-water supply.

Still, it beats lugging around a bag of ice.

I read quite a few wrap-ups from last week's Lotusphere show this morning because we launched a new series at Intranet Journal last week that looks at building intranet solutions with Lotus products. For the most part, the Lotus faithful seemed happy with the conference and IBM said it was best attended Lotusphere show since Sept. 11, 2001.

That being said, Jeff Jarvis over at Buzz Machine has a plan for, as he calls it, "exploding" the conference business. Conferences, Jarvis says, are too expensive, too boring, and too often filled with commercial pitches.

Jarvis says people who really want to get together in person to exchange information should start their own conferences, which is easier to do given all the collaboration technology built on the Internet.

What if we could gang together to find a critical mass of people who want to meet — all welcome — and we use online tools to agree on agendas — or not — and when we hit critical mass, we pool resources to hire a concierge to rent the room and bring in the lunch for us? What would that cost? A hulluva lot less than $1,700 for two days of blather and another chintzy bag, that's for damned sure.

Jarvis gave the newspaper industry similar treatment in a post earlier this month. Both ideas have some merit, but neither takes into account the business reality of either newspapers or conferences.

I've long marveled at the tech industry's curiously drab approach toward computer case design. With very few exceptions (Apple and Alienware come to mind), computer buyers traditionally have had to choose between black, gray, silver or beige towers and laptops. How inspiring.

Maybe it made sense when the primary market for computers was businesses and other organizations. But all those desktops and laptops lining the shelves of Best Buy are supposed to be targeted toward consumers, many of whom have a passing familiarity with the primary colors and aren't afraid to reflect it in their technology purchases, if given the chance.

Now, as this CNET story points out:

That philosophy is starting to change. A few computer companies and several accessory makers and custom specialists have figured out that, like '70s-era custom vans and dot-com-era BMWs, custom-look laptops can be seen as potent style statements.

From collegiate logos to Ultrasuede fabric, computer makers are beginning to loosen up when it comes to laptop casings.

But as the article explains, rather than wait for vendors to catch up, "tech-savvy individuals looking for something different tend to produce their own creations, a practice known as 'case-modding.'"

I just wonder why it took so long.

Can "open-source" books improve the quality of technology books by letting readers comment on and correct the book as it heads for publishing?

Safari Books, the joint venture between O'Reilly Media, Inc. and Pearson Technology Group, announced this week a service they call Rough Cuts.

Readers who buy a Rough Cuts title get immediate access to an evolving manuscript. They can read the book online or download and print a PDF version. The initial version of a Rough Cuts book will not be fully edited, subjected to final technical review, or completely formatted. Similar to the nightly build in a software project, the Rough Cuts PDF is updated every time the author and editor make changes as they progress toward the finished book. Using the Rough Cuts service's built-in Notes feature, readers can send feedback, suggestions, bug fixes, and comments directly to the author and editor.

Rough Cuts will be available two to six months before the book's scheduled publication. Naturally, this idea raises questions, but I'm sure the Safari people have thought about them.

Technoloy is always evolving, so how do you decide when to go to print?

How much time does this add to the publication process?

What happens if a book isn't received well by those who buy the Rough Cut? Could the book be taken off Safari's publication list?

The first titles to get the Rough Cut treatment are on such popular topics as AJAX, Ruby, and Flickr.

We've received a ton of nominations for Datamation's 2006 Product of the Year Awards this week, but there's still time for you to make your voice heard.

You can nominate your favorite products in any of 10 categories with this handy nomination form.

We'll pull the nomination form next week to work on the final ballot. Don't wait until it's too late; guilt and self-recrimination are terrible burdens.

Every now and then, I feel compelled to write a post about my day job.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is building an intranet with its content management based on open source technology, specifically the Zope application server. (Thanks to Toby Ward for the link.)

There's some advice in the story about hiring open-source developers, which RBS had to do for the project:

"With recruitment agencies — if you say you're looking for a Zope developer, they won't have a clue what you're talking about. If you get in with the open source community you can find the right people."

The story also says that open source is a good choice for intranets because it keeps costs down and it's not customer-facing. I guess the point being that even if you're not sure of the stability or security of the system, your customers won't be directly impacted.

There are almost too many open-source content management systems to count. Seth Gottlieb, the content management practice leader for Optaros, just published a white paper that looks at some 15 such projects. They aren't terribly hard to build as Peter Zeidman showed in a tutorial using PHP on our Intranet Journal site.

The Nielsen Norman Group released its report on the best intranet designs this week and found that 40 percent of the winners custom built their content management systems. The most popular intranet product among this year's winners was the Apache Web server, but proprietary products are still in demand. Products from Autonomy, BEA, EMC-Documentum, IBM, Lucene, Oracle, Verity, and Microsoft were also well represented.

I'm hoping to speak to someone at Nielsen Norman Group next week, and I'll write about the report and our conversation on Intranet Journal.

David Card waited more than three weeks to make his technology and media predictions for 2006, and that was the best he could do for Yahoo!

I'm being unfair, of course (he admits it's flippant). I didn't even make predictions for 2006, and Card is, in my humble opinion, the most interesting blogger over at our JupiterResearch group.

He does draw attention to what he considers the most critical concept to come out of JupiterResearch in 2005.

Simply put, "Publishers must make their sites the archive and Google their search page." Gawd knows, I'm one of the original proponents of herding the sheep, but there will be a whole new way of doing that. It's not a site anymore, it's a network of landing pages.

He doesn't think most companies will figure this out in the coming year.

Other observations:

Google offline advertising will be much talked about but little for real

Same goes for blog network advertising dollars

Someone important will leave Google

Last week I told you how Mike Nash, vice president of Microsoft's Security Technology Unit, would be answering the questions submitted by members of the Slashdot community.

A week later, Nash has provided his answers, which are thorough (read: long) and interesting. They shed some light on how Microsoft thinks about security, and how the company's thinking changed over the last several years.

I'm especially pleased to see the question I liked the best was chosen for the Q&A:

How often do you (and the members of your team) spend time with average end-users — not just in large corporate settings but in small businesses and (just as importantly) in real-world home settings?

Here's an interesting anecdote from his answer:

In late 2001, I sent a mail to all of my family members telling them that I would only help them with their PC if they were running Windows XP, so my grandmother ran out and bought an XP machine.

Even family members have to upgrade when support ends!

About 20 percent of your workers say they'll be "outta here" by year's end.

From this Datamation story:

According to a new survey commissioned by Key Group, a management training and consulting company based in Pittsburgh, Pa., one out of five workers plans to quit their job this year to pursue a more balanced life.

While you may be happy to see some of them go, don't begin celebrating just yet because much of the discontent stems from the aforementioned work/life imbalance; i.e. too much work and not enough life. Which means some of your hardest and most productive employees are fed up and mentally have one foot out the door, even as they continue to code with the other.

Unfortunately, too often these are the workers taken for granted -- the quiet ones who get their jobs done without complaining, grandstanding or sucking up to the boss.

And as the IT job market loosens up:

CIOs and IT managers better be thinking about what they can do to keep their employees from looking for greener pastures.

"[T]urnover is very costly, in terms of productivity lost, intellectual capital and training expenses to rehire people," says Ryan Gilmore of IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology.

He left out the part about it being a huge pain, as any manager who has ever tried to replace a departed employee can attest. It's like the audition process for American Idol, without having Simon around to do the dirty work.

Page 2 of the article outlines steps you can take to retain good workers without busting your budget. Ignore them at your own peril.

There's an opportunity for some innocent network security voyeurism over at EnterpriseITPlanet. Sonny Discini lets readers take a look in his network security toolbox, and explains what security tools he finds himself using most often.

Over the years, I've found myself on the front lines of incident response, attack detection, bot enumeration and various other adventures in network security. Along the way, there have been times where various types of information or functionality were needed immediately. Through the pains of learning what works when you're in a pinch, I bring you the list of six tools, plus one, that every security practitioner should have.

He's got a port scanner, something for PGP e-mail, and an IP scanner. But the tools he uses most often are TCPView, which allows users to see all open TCP and UDP endpoints, and Process Explorer, which provides very specific information on all processes currently running on your host.

The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business are out, courtesy of Business 2.0. This is probably a list that can go into the thousands, but fortunately we're spared.

No. 1 on the full list goes to an executive with AvalonBay Communities, which was converting a former mental hospital in Danvers, Mass., into luxury condominiums. But it turns out the real estate bubble has led to similar projects in the works across the country.

(In a country that feeds on reality TV and celebrity gossip, maybe the consumers are to blame for some of these ideas. Just a thought.)

You can also view the moments by industry. The Dumbest Moments in Technology list is led by Sony's rootkit fiasco.

My favorite on the tech list is No. 101 overall:

In September, as the result of a typo in a spreadsheet, Electronic Arts issues an update to Madden NFL 06 that reduces 6-foot-3, 305-pound New York Jets lineman Michael King to a height of 7 inches. The next day, EA fixes the bug — to a chorus of complaints from customers who enjoyed watching the shin-high blocker get steamrollered by full-size players such as seven-time All-Pro linebacker Derrick Brooks of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In total, only 11 of the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for 2005 were in the tech industry. Nice job. Pat yourself on the back.

Even better news: tech dominates the 2006 Smart List. Winners there include Google (Smartest Company), GoDaddy.com (Smartest Ad Campaign), Jeremey Allaire (Smartest Entrepreneur), Skype (Smartest Exit Strategy), RSS (Smartest Technology), and Motorola (Smartest Turnaround).

I would have linked to the rest of the Smart List winners, but they're only available in a pop-up off the main page. Now that's dumb.

Mike Pastore had some typically keen insights earlier today about CEO blogs and why they're getting better.

I won't reiterate here what Mike wrote (you can find that three posts below this one under the headline "Executive Communications Show Improvement").

But I'll add this: A blog, like any other writing venue, demands a certain form and tone. For example, news articles are supposed to be written in a particular way -- dry, impersonal and (hopefully) factually accurate. That's what the form requires. Never in a million years would I insert jokey little asides into a news story I was writing; it would be jarring and out of place. In contrast, the blog form is, well, informal, and the tone personal. Best of all, there's absolutely no pressure to be accurate.

See how it works!

Now CEOs have been trained their whole careers to think, act and write like "corporobots." Suddenly there's this new kind of corporate communications vehicle which cuts against the rigid molds of annual stockholder reports, sanitized press releases and rah-rah internal publications.

No doubt it's taking some CEOs longer than others, but we're really talking about internalizing the blog form and style, or, at the very least, adapting to and imitating it. And one thing is for sure: Adaptation and imitation are skills almost all successful CEOs must possess in order to survive.

So blog on, my CEO friends. One final word of advice, though: When it comes to writing about corporate business, leave the inaccuracies to professionals like myself.

Many people like to make fun of academic types, mocking them for being "in their own little world" and "out of touch" with reality. And why not? It's not like they can beat you up, unless you're a Linux programmer.

But if this Harvard-Oxford collaboration to combat malware reduces the torrent of junk polluting computers in the "real world," university geeks will be able to stand as tall as their stooped forms will allow and say: "How you like me now?"

Researchers from Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Oxford Internet Institute have created a web site, StopBadware.org, designed to "out" the companies that benefit from assorted malware, which is now a $2 billion industry, according to Webroot Software, an anti-spyware vendor.

What I like about the approach is its aggressiveness. These guys aren't just playing defense or "educating" consumers (though that's part of the strategy): As Red Herring reports, they're taking the fight to the cyber-sleazebags:

The participants plan to publish the names of companies that are spreading "badware" and describe how they make money from marketing practices such as incessant pop-up ads. The StopBadware group will run ads that highlight the worst offenders and seek out horror stories from users.

Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

Also joining the posse are Sun Microsystems, Google, Lenovo and Consumer Reports' WebWatch, which will act as a consumer advisor.

This is a pretty good idea. It's just one that's unlikely to be adopted by any Internet companies of consequence.

The idea is an ethics code for Internet companies, as proposed by Reporters Without Borders earlier this month.

On 6 January, Reporters Without Borders issued six concrete proposals aimed at ensuring that Internet-sector companies respect free expression when operating in repressive countries. The organisation calls on bloggers and Internet users to sign an online petition in support of this initiative.

Reporters Without Borders is (understandably) upset about companies like Google agreeing to censor Web activity in exchange for access to the massive Chinese market. The organization cites even more trangressions on its site, involving Cisco, Fortinet, and Secure Computing.

The proposals cover e-mail, search engines, content hosts, training for surveillance technology, and censorship technology. The problem, of course, is that there is money to be made and those all-important shareholders to please. So the idea of passing up the Chinese market (it's not just China, Reporters Withour Borders cites Burma and Tunisia, and there's a host of repressive countries out there) for something like freedom of expression is unlikely to fly.

Reporters Without Borders also has a guide for bloggers in repressed nations and other "cyber-dissidents."

This is of interest to me because of my work in intranets, and it also goes to heart of business blogging and new ways of communicating to employees.

Corporate communications blogger Steve Crescenzo says that CEO columns, those first-page communications from the chief executive in most employee publications, are getting better.

I'm seeing more and more CEO columns — both in print and online — that are willing to deal with real issues. I'm seeing CEOs tackle bad news head-on. I've actually seen a couple of CEO blogs that are conversational — rather than "corporate"—in tone.

Steve says it could be that CEOs are getting younger. Maybe we're seeing a payoff in higher-education initiatives that wanted to teach students how to write, in addition to subjects like management, business, and finance.

I wonder if the use of intranets and blogs encourage a more personal tone because the columns get to their audience quicker than they would in a magazine or newsletter. Online communications also allow CEOs to write when they are moved by a subject or by an incident, as opposed to coming up with 350 words once a month on a deadline.

I suppose it's also possible that CEOs that blog have put pressure on those who don't to be better communicators.

Thanks to Shel Holtz for the link.

What are we going to do with you, Microsoft? You willingly enter into a consent decree to settle a highly publicized anti-trust lawsuit, yet every time we check in on you there seems to be a problem. It's as though your heart really isn't in this.

Latest example, courtesy of CNET:

Microsoft is falling behind in meeting certain obligations under its antitrust agreement with the U.S. government, the Bush administration said.

The criticism, leveled by federal and state prosecutors in a document filed Monday with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, largely surrounded the company's progress in developing technical documentation for developers who license the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program.

Sure, we think it's boring too, but you've gotta keep your eye on the ball! You can't just say you're "working hard to resolve the concerns." It's just like Elaine Benis said to Kramer in one episode of Seinfeld: "There is no 'try.' There's 'do' and 'not do.'" Or maybe it was Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back.

And this isn't the first time we've had to talk to you. In October you were trying to boss people around about media player software. When a federal judge called you to the carpet, you expressed "chagrin" and promised to conduct "a very serious inward look at (your) compliance efforts."

Well, it appears some more soul-searching is in order. Now go to your room, and no Internet for a week.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a spammer who faces prison time after cutting a plea deal with prosecutors.

Now a hacker has copped a plea in another cyber-case that could net him a long stay in Club Fed, according to the San Jose Mercury-News:

Jeanson James Ancheta ... pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles to four felony charges for crimes, including infecting machines at two U.S. military sites...

According to prosecutors, Ancheta created armies of "botnets" -- a network of computers surreptitiously controlled by the hacker -- and sold them to spammers, other hackers and their ilk. He did this for 14 months beginning in June 2004 and made more than $60,000.

Honestly, I feel bad for Ancheta's family, but less so for him, since he apparently continued the illicit operation even after FBI agents raided his home in December 2004. Maybe now it's dawned on him that this is no joke.

A judge still must approve the plea agreement, under which prosecutors want a six-year prison sentence, payment of restitution to the government and forfeiture of both his profits and a 1993 BMW purchased with money from the hacking operation.

According to this PC World story, it's the "first time in the U.S. that a hacker has been convicted not only for creating and spreading malicious code but also for making money from it."

Good. Keep the heat on. I'm wondering, though, who Ancheta was doing business with and whether prosecutors are any closer to more arrests in the case. Isn't buying a "botnet army" being run off illegally hacked computers also a crime? The conspirators could be based overseas and beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement, but since I've read nothing about it, I'm only guessing.

I also find it troubling that a 20-year-old (in fact, he may have been 18 at the time) was able to hack into systems at the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center and the Defense Information Systems Agency. Seems that kind of thing is important nowadays, though maybe not as important as determining how much porn can be found through search engines.

Say what you want about Microsoft's security, but at least using a system of monthly patches plugs the holes and keeps the numbers reasonable. Oracle last week issued its first bunch of patches since October and the number hit 82. In October it was 89. (Kobe Bryant scored 81 points in a game this week, for those averse to SportsCenter.)

At the very least numbers like these attract attention. Just look at the lead EarthWebNews used in its story.

The patches also got the attention of Gartner. Analyst Rich Mogull yesterday published an analysis of Oracle's security. It was less than glowing.

Many Oracle administrators rely on a combination of the company's historically strong security and the fact that Oracle applications and databases are typically located deep within the enterprise, and so neglect to patch their systems regularly. Moreover, patching is sometimes impossible, due to ties to legacy versions that Oracle no longer supports. These practices are no longer acceptable...

Also interesting was Mogull's observation that Oracle provides far less information about vulnerabilities than is the industry standard. There's a short list of recommendations for Oracle customers in his analysis.

Thanks to Michael Sampson at Shared Spaces for the link.

It's never been a problem here at our humble blog, but anyone who consumes blogs on a regular basis knows things can get out of hand when you set the Linux people against the Microsoft people, or the Mac people against... anyone saying anything negative about Apple.

So it was with great interest this morning when I came across a blog post by Scott Rosenberg. Scott is the managing editor of Salon, and once upon a time he was a technology columnist for the San Francisco Examiner.

Working at Salon, Scott deals quite a bit with political blogs. It doesn't take much to imagine how the blue vs. red, liberal vs. conservative, and religion vs. secular battles must flare up; flamewars, as they're called in this industry. Scott writes: "Political blogging in the rigid partisan landscape of 2006 too often resembles the parallel enforcement of party discipline."

And where to look for an example of how blog conversations can be persuasive, informative, and civil? He suggests the tech blogs.

But you can find exchanges today that model the possibilities of a post-media conversation — where the actors in a field talk directly to each other, engaging and challenging and correcting each other. One place you can find them is the software world. It certainly has its feuds and its entrenched patterns of provocative trolling (just drop an anti-Macintosh comment and watch the group-mind hive buzz on cue). But, in following this field, I'm amazed, day after day, to see rivals and competitors lace their barbs with friendly banter and honest efforts at persuasion, or to watch critics and their subjects take on the awkward but fruitful back-and-forth that can actually move readers a few notches closer toward the truth.

If it's true, and no doubt it depends on the blog and the audience, maybe it's a sign of the maturity of blogging in the tech world. Not the maturity of the people necessarily, but tech blogs have probably been around longer.

Thanks to Shore Communications for the link.

Doesn't it rankle you when a product you hate wins some kind of award? Or even worse, when a product you really like isn't getting its props?

Well, here's your chance to strike a blow for justice in the networking world. Datamation is soliciting nominations right now for its annual Product of the Year awards.

(Yes, this is a plug, but I'm keeping it short.)

Here's the nomination form. The space for choosing nominees is toward the bottom, after the marketing hype explanatory text. There are 10 categories:

Anti-spam Software
Compliance Software
Corporate Blogging Software
Enterprise Instant Messaging
Enterprise Linux Application
Enterprise Security
Enterprise Server
Handheld Device
Network & Systems Management Software
Wireless Software

All products must have been released during the 2005 calendar year.

Now go cast your ballots. Please. And use your power wisely.

OK, so no one expects an introverted geek billionaire to turn into Knute Rockne overnight.

But as the Super Bowl media frenzy shifts into high gear, Seattle Seahawks owner and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen might want to consider outsourcing public appearances on behalf of his football team. I'm thinking maybe a fiery cricket player from Bangalore.

Accepting the NFC championship trophy on live television last night following the Seahawks' 34-14 pounding of the Carolina Panthers, Allen almost accomplished the impossible -- silencing a notoriously boisterous crowd still delirious over the 'Hawks first trip to the Big Game.

While I exaggerate only slightly, a classic sports moment it wasn't. Allen parried a lame email joke from Terry Bradshaw, acknowledged the importance of Seattle's "12th man" -- the noisy crowd that routinely inflicts permanent hearing damage on opposing players -- and then hoisted the NFC championship trophy with the ease of a spindly programmer clean-jerking an IBM mainframe over his head.

A bizarre scene all around, especially the interaction between the brainy, understated Allen and goofy uber-extrovert Bradshaw. I'm not sure, but as they were standing together I thought I heard a small tear in the fabric of the universe.

It also reminded me of Allen's locker-room speech a couple of weeks ago after the Seahawks first playoff victory, which I saw on NFL Total Access. He delivered his congratulations with the passion of a bored network manager outlining reboot procedures to a new group of sysadmins.

All kidding aside, sports fans in the Northwest owe Allen a debt of gratitude. A decade ago, Allen's intervention prevented the franchise from relocating to Los Angeles, and his commitment to coach Mike Holmgren allowed the team to develop into a winner.

I wish Allen and his Seahawks good luck in Detroit on Feb. 5. They go in as 3 1/2 point underdogs against the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are playing like a team of destiny. Whatever the final score, though, it's safe to say that Steeler owner Dan Rooney will never be able to hot-swap a server.

A new personal computer design called Bookshelf, invented by a pair of industrial designers from Purdue University, won an award in a Microsoft-sponsored competition this month.

The designers looked at two problems facing PCs and their users today, namely digital rights management and the accessibility of multimedia entertainment. What they came up with was a hardware design that looks nothing like the traditional PC.

The personal computer physically resembles a bookshelf and functions like a bookshelf as books and magazines — or in this case, hardware — are placed on it. The foundation of the computer is its central processing unit, which is a 7-inch cube. The Bookshelf operates with add-on hard drive attachments that are supplied by digital service providers so they can protect copyrights while still accommodating user convenience and portability. The hardware attachments — containing multiple movies, games, or magazines — will vary in width, but its other dimensions will be the same as the Bookshelf cube. As the hardware attachments are added, the Bookshelf becomes its own multimedia library custom-built by its owner.

The pieces even fit nicely on a bookshelf. There's a psychological aspect to this too: because of the physical possession of the hardware, users better understand the concept of owning the media, much like a book.

I know, PCs and other electronics are all about smaller these days, but I appreciate people who think outside the box. The PC design has changed very little in a couple of decades.

Thanks to A.J. for the link.

What could possible go wrong with an $8 billion IT project involving two branches of the U.S. armed forces, the Pentagon, Congress, and a huge IT servcies company like EDS? Quite a bit as it turns out.

Intranet blogger Toby Ward has been following the latest in the Navy-Marine Corps. Intranet (NMCI) saga. It is to be the largest intranet ever created. But at the low point, EDS was losing $800 million a year on this project. The company told eWeek things are getting better, though it's unlikely EDS will ever make money on the deal.

Among the improvements made were changes to the contract language and the consolidation of project management in one office, instead of many local offices. Still, the person now in charge of the contract for EDS called it a "going-out-of-business strategy."

Ward also pointed out this weekend what we should have seen coming: that a huge government contract debacle would lead to accusations of influence peddling.

A high-ranking California Republican congressman preserved funding for a defense project critical to a New York investment company that raised more than $130,000 for him, according to a published report Thursday.

As we know from yesterday's headlines, Google has refused to comply with a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena from last summer ordering it to turn over a massive amount of search data as part of a White House bid to restore online child protection laws ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the other major search engines:

Microsoft, Yahoo, and America Online admitted Friday they provided some data to the Justice Department.

Translation: Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft rolled over for the government. It's not even deniable, though, as Search Engine Watch's Danny Sullivan points out, Yahoo initially made a feeble effort to do so.

I just wonder what pressure was applied or implied. It's understandable, in a business sort of way, why these companies (yes, including Google) cave into Chinese government demands to censor search results and screen out certain sites -- China is a huge, nascent market for American Internet companies. (Understandable, mind you, not acceptable.) But there's no wide-open market opportunity in the U.S., no low-hanging fruit. So why the seemingly eager surrender of data?

The Gang of Three hastens to argue that they didn't hand over personal information, and Sullivan is adamant on this point as well. I don't know. Maybe if these companies announced last summer that they handed over search data to the feds, I'd be more inclined to take their word. But they maintained a veil of silence about it until the story broke yesterday.

You have to wonder what else we don't know, and you have to wonder to what extent search companies, ISPs and others will cooperate with secret government investigations in the future. It sure feels to me like all bets are off.

Back when I was the editor of CyberAtlas, the No. 1 Internet destination for Internet statistics, I was asked on a weekly, almost daily, basis how much pornography was on the Internet. Some people asked how much revenue it generated; others asked how many sites there were. It was such a common question I added it to the FAQ I developed for the site. (There's no real reliable answer, by the way, as the DoJ will find out.)

So I watch the Department of Justice bugging search engines to answer this question with quite a bit of interest. We often joke about the amount of porn online. But what do people really search for? I suppose one way to find out is to subpoena the search engines. But assuming you know how to use one, it's not that hard to find out.

First stop, SearchEngineWatch, where Danny Sullivan provides URLs for sites that help. A quick look at AOL's top searches for 2005 reveals a wonderful online utopia where everyone is, among other things, fully clad. I'm sure the people searching for the eight young women among the 11 most-searched-for celebrities under age 21 (I count each Olsen twin as an individual human being here) had decent intentions.

The unfiltered version of Dogpile's Search Spy: real-time results from a meta search engine. Surely we'll find something here. Ah, third result: sex fantasies. Of course, that could be a clinical question. You see some fascinating stuff if you watch this for five minutes. I saw only three likely porn queries. By the way, good luck to the guy who searched Dogpile for "Google."

"Naked news" was a popular seach term last week at Google. I think you can find that on pay-per-view; contact your cable or satellite provider.

My point is this. An AOL spokesperson said the company gave the DoJ a "generic list of aggregate and anonymous search terms." It's unlikely that list will be of any use to the case.

It has been written, though not in these pages by this author (I don't think), that people who work in IT have trouble with their social skills. I don't think this is universally true, nor do I think it's restricted to IT by any means.

With the holidays behind us, there's time on the calendar for some conferences over the next few months. Next week fans of all things Lotus will gather for Lotusphere (and a few things Disney I'm sure) down in Orlando.

Among them will be Julian Robichaux, who yesterday on his blog published some tips on how to meet people at conferences. For people who prefer to be introverts, like myself, this can be a bit of challenge. I personally just force myself to put on an extrovert face for the day.

There's some good advice.

Most of the people there are probably a lot like you anyway. That's why you're all at the same conference. Seemingly "off topic" subjects that are interesting to you — like music, iPods, movies, whatever — are probably good things to try to talk about, because you may quickly find some things in common.

Julian also advises you stop people you want to talk to on the way out of the bathroom, not the way in.

As for my interest in Lotus and Lotusphere, hopefully that'll be more clear in the next week or so.

Sarbanes and Oxley are at it again, and this time it's users of Linux at publicly traded companies that need to pay attention.

Research by Wasabi Systems into open-source software licensing found that companies using Linux for embedded applications may be unwittingly violating the Linux license and even breaking the laws of Sarbanes-Oxley.

According to the study, the problem lies with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that companies disclose ownership of intellectual property to their shareholders. The study indicates that dozens of companies are discovered each year to have violated the terms of GPL, and if they are public companies, they are violating Sarbanes-Oxley.

You can read the entire report from Wasabi Systems on the company's Web site.

I'm not a lawyer, but taken at face value, this is one of those problems that could become a royal pain because open source adoption continues to increase and it mixes with proprietary systems. Making sure you stay within your GPL is of the utmost importance.

Just yesterday at a conference sponsored by the non-profit SD Forum, the consensus seemed to be that open source has a bright future as a building block in commercial software that also includes proprietary elements.

Thanks to the Computerworld IT Management blog for first bringing this to my attention.

Let's say you wanted to find out how often a particular topic -- say, pornography -- showed up in online searches, how would you go about determining the answer?

Hmm. Tough question. Wait! I know! You could ask a federal judge to order search-engine giant Google to hand over information from its databases and see what other Google users are searching for.

Or -- and granted, this is "out of the box" -- you could go on Google yourself, type in some porn-related keywords, and find your answer that way.

Well, the Bush Administration is opting for the former. The Bush Justice Department, not satisfied with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling two years ago that struck down an Internet child protection law, wants a federal judge to force Google to respond to a subpoena issued last year...

...which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

That's some fishing expedition. I wonder what the 9/11 angle is?

Here, I'll give the Justice Department a head start. True story: Last weekend my wife wanted to find the web site of a local store called Dick's Sporting Goods. She innocently typed in "dicks.com" and guess what popped up? I can't wait for the feds to drop by for a chat and some tea.

The good news, according to the San Jose Mercury News, is that Google is having none of it:

Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort "vigorously."

"Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching," Wong said.

The bad news is that "other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information." What that means, of course, is they're selling out their users en masse. And yes, this has implications for companies whose employees use search tools in the workplace.

Lest you think I'm just some overreacting blogger, I'll give the last word to Ray Everett-Church, one of our eSecurity Planet columnists and a consultant to Internet companies facing federal subpoenas. He tells the Merc-News:

"This is exactly the kind of case that privacy advocates have long feared. The idea that these massive databases are being thrown open to anyone with a court document is the worst-case scenario."

Film at 11. It's true that earlier in the month I said I wasn't a huge fan of Slashdot, so let me say right off the bat that I saw this on Todd Bishop's Microsoft blog at the Seattle P-I.

Slashdot is collecting questions from its community that will be answered by Mike Nash, vice president of Microsoft's Security Technology Unit. The answers, they say, will come straight from Nash without help from PR sometime next week.

For now, it's the questions, which range from typical flamebait to intelligent queries, that you can read, and even contribute to the thread.

Some that I like (condensed in some cases):

How often do you (and the members of your team) spend time with average end-users — not just in large corporate settings but in small businesses and (just as importantly) in real-world home settings?

In your opinion, has Microsoft succeeded in changing its culture so that every developer now considers security first, features second?

As the recent WMF issues have demonstrated, there is a lot of legacy code in the core OS. Some of it seems to date back over a decade... While I understand backwards compatibility is important for some customers, has there been serious efforts to audit that old code? What about the idea of a clean break with ancient code?

A couple made me laugh:

Are you afraid that if Microsoft Security isn't greatly improved in Vista that a chair will be thrown at you?

I'm from China and I was wondering [remainder of message censored by People's Center For Internet Enhancement - Powered by Microsoft]

Can't wait to see which questions make the cut and, of course, the answers. So yes, I will be making a return visit to Slashdot.

In a previous incarnation I was an Internet stocks columnist. I hesitate to say I was an "analyst," and I certainly never would have labeled myself an "expert." (Though if that's what others wanted to call me, well, that's what mothers do.)

Still, I had a good grasp of fundamentals and prided myself on not being one of the purveyors of "irrational exuberance" who made a mockery of common sense in the late '90s. If I saw a dog, I called it a dog. (Proof I'm not making this up here, here and -- personal favorite -- here.)

Today, however, with disappointing fourth-quarter earnings reports from Yahoo and Intel and a potential Internet company scandal in Japan sending the market into a tailspin, I think some shameless cheerleading is in order.

OK, not really. But I do wish investors would stop overreacting to every piece of disappointing news as if it were the end of the world. Take Yahoo, for example:

Yahoo said net income surged 45% to $683 million, or 46 cents a share, from $372 million, or 25 cents, a year earlier. Excluding certain items, Yahoo earned $247 million, or 16 cents a share, below analysts' expectations of 17 cents a share.

So Yahoo missed estimates by one cent. Does that warrant a 12 percent dip in the stock price in early trading today? Of course not, and that's taking into account the stock's 20 percent rise over the past three months. You big babies.

I'm with Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto, who thinks buying Yahoo on today's dip is a good idea.

Now, it's true that Yahoo's expects to earn between $410 million and $440 million in operating income in the first quarter, short of the $475 million expected by some analysts. But maybe that's the real problem: Unrealistic expectations set by so-called "expert" analysts, many of whom have an arguable conflict of interest.

But since I'm not one of those "experts," will anyone listen to me? No. (Even my mom put in a sell order today.) So prepare for more market turbulence as the Q4 reports come rolling in.

I received an e-mail from the McKinsey Quarterly today showcasing just one article. "Ten Trends to Watch in 2006" (free registration required) was written by Ian Davis, worldwide managing director of McKinsey & Company, and Elizabeth Stephenson, a consultant in McKinsey's San Francisco office.

The article isn't focused on IT specifically, but on trends divided into three categories (macroeconomic, social and environmental, and business and industry) that the authors think will profoundly shape the corporate landscape in the coming years.

Predicting short-term changes or shocks is often a fool's errand. But forecasting long-term directional change is possible by identifying trends through an analysis of deep history rather than of the shallow past.

For people like me who feed on useless information, the article is full of interesting statistics, including a whole list down the right side of the page.

Among the ones I found interesting, in no particular order and claiming no particular relevance:

• We do a billion Google searches a day, more than half in languages other than English

• Almost a billion new consumers will enter the global marketplace in the next decade

• 12 percent of US newlyweds last year met online

• Proportion of Latin Americans who would prefer a dictator to democracy if he improved their living conditions: 50%

• Probability that a company in an industry's top revenue quartile will not be there in five years: 30 percent
  

I'm waiting to see what, if anything, security types like Bruce Schneier have to say about E*Trade's announcement that it would fully reimburse any customer who is the victim of fraudulent activity.

Schneier has been writing for some time in his blog that online fraud will remain a big issue until the financial services companies are hit in the wallet.

It's expected that E*Trade's move will force competitors like Ameritrade and Schwab to follow suit.

The Times says the announcement may be "more of a sales pitch than a security protection given the token amounts of money lost to fraud." But given the attention focused on online fraud, real or perceived, it just might work as a sales pitch.

I just read about an academic study which concludes that Internet users will take one-twentieth of a second to determine if they like the design of a particular Web site. And if they don't, they'll never come back.

Actually, I only glanced at the headline of the story ("Websites judged in milliseconds") on PC Pro. I couldn't bear to stare at that page another millisecond. I instantly judged the banner to be ham-fisted and top-heavy, and the little red box in the upper left corner ... well, it sickened me.

(Many of you probably aren't even reading these words because you immediately fled our site in disgust, perhaps turned off by the stodgy typeface in the banner or the garish orange background of the title for the IT Management blog.)

Then I thought, "Maybe I need to learn more about this study." So in an act of spousal abuse, I asked my wife to click on the link provided by PC Pro (which won't be getting my business any more, thank you very much) to the