2018 Shell Jewelry weblogs

Top executives said recently that they felt the quality of Live Search had reached a point where it made sense to start using some marketing dollars to acquire traffic, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first deal of many, especially since Microsoft has yet to reach a deal with Yahoo and its share of the search market has continued to decline.

For antitrust reasons, Microsoft can’t just make its engine the default in Internet Explorer (except in some very limited circumstances). If it wants to get Live Search on new PCs, it has to strike a deal with computer makers, just as rivals have done.

A sure way to get some search traffic is to make sure that your engine is the default option inside the browser.

“This agreement with HP is a strategic indicator of our increased focus on securing broad-scale distribution for Live Search,” Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division, said in a statement. “This is the most significant distribution deal for Live Search that Microsoft has ever done, and we are very pleased to be partnering with HP to help bring Live Search to millions of consumers across North America.”

Microsoft didn’t say how much it is paying HP for the right to be on its PCs, but it did call the deal its most significant one to date.

On Monday, Microsoft announced just such an agreement, with Hewlett-Packard agreeing to make Live Search the default on its consumer PCs starting in January. The computers will also carry a toolbar that uses Microsoft’s Silverlight in conjunction with Live Search.

One example in the Web 2.0 world is OpSource, which is delivering billions of transactions a day as an SaaS provider using the ESB at the crux of the transactions. This is much larger than Twitter and has actual revenue impact. Maybe OpSource can host Twitter?

It’s not. It’s very common, and it can be solved.

Scaling a messaging platform is why IBM sells a boatload of MQ series, why the AMQP protocol was developed, and why JMS is nearly ubiquitous. Pretty much every large enterprise has similar scale issues related to messaging, especially in financial services. But they don’t have downtime, and if they did as frequently as Twitter, the people behind them would all get fired.

As we Twitt-iots sit around bemoaning the fact that we can’t send each other useless junk on a flaky service, I thought I would take this chance to address the notion that this message-scaling problem is new.

In my view, what Twitter needs is to adopt a bus-type of architecture that separates the transport from the application and uses a middleman to process the transactions. This is a very common enterprise scenario that needs to be applied. This is what an ESB does.

This is a topic I actually know something about. (Disclosure: my company develops an open-source enterprise service bus, or ESB, called Mule.) All of our use cases involve some kind of complicated messaging architecture, whether it be Web-service based, publish and subscribe, one to many, direct connection, etc. And most deal with data transformations and a vast array of protocols.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET Networks)

The service catalogs the components of a conversation: the people participating, links, dates, images, files, and so on.

The service is free at the moment. Signing up is automatic if you copy a message to betty@ccbetty.com. A paid, premium version with additional features is coming.

There’s nothing in a Cc:Betty mail space that isn’t stored inherently in the e-mail messages themselves, but the system’s cataloging and feature extraction makes mail threads more useful and much easier to navigate if and when they get convoluted with a lot of people chiming in.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET Networks)

Cc:Betty is missing a critical feature right now: it has no search function. That’s supposed to be coming in about a week.

Unlike the mail client add-ons (in particular, Xobni), Cc:Betty works with any e-mail system. Also unlike Xobni, it’s useful to everyone in a conversation, not just those who have installed the Xobni add-on.

Cc:Betty, launching at this week’s Demo 09, is a clever online assistant that tracks e-mail conversations.

Using it is simple: you copy betty@ccbetty.com on an e-mail, and it creates a Web-based “mail space” for the thread. The system parses out dates and locations as downloadable calendar items and map links. It also creates catalogs of media items (pictures and videos) and files that are attached to messages.

Cc:Betty starts by collecting messages in the e-mail threads you care about.

Using Cc:Betty reminds me of two different experiences: 1) Bug tracking system Bugzilla, which is a product some companies (like mine) use to track conversations around software development. 2) Tripit, the travel planning assistant that works like Cc:Betty: you cc it on your travel plans and it creates a useful record of all the related content for you.

CNN reported that T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and AT&T indicated that they would be likely to sign up for the FCC’s system.

Meanwhile, nongovernment groups like Google.org have also embarked upon projects to use text messaging, as well as services like Twitter, for both disaster awareness and rescue.

There will be “presidential alerts” for major national emergencies like terrorist attacks, “imminent threat alerts” for localized emergencies like hurricanes and tornadoes, and Amber Alerts for missing children–which have been broadcast to cell phones since 2005.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a plan on Thursday to team up with wireless carriers for emergency text message alerts.

Cellular service providers can opt into the new system, called the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS); then, their customers will receive three varieties of text message from a not-yet-specified government agency.

When there is, carriers that choose to participate will have 10 months to comply with the FCC’s rules. “We are hopeful that we have initiated the dialogue that will allow an appropriate federal entity to assume that central role in an expeditious manner.”

A release from the agency hinted that as mobile technology evolves, audio and video alerts may be implemented as well.

“No one questions the value that an effective Commercial Mobile Alert System will have on the safety and welfare of the American public,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in a statement issued Thursday, admitting that there is not yet a federal agency in place to handle the messages (PDF).

Finally, we discuss a judge’s ruling in Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google and YouTube.

Of course, the Microhoo drama continues this week with the latest rumors. Larry is ready for this opera to be finished.

U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton ruled that records of every video watched by YouTube users, including login names and IP addresses, should be given to Viacom’s lawyers. Larry said it was like combining the worst aspects of a fishing expedition and a witch hunt. Viacom is maintaining that it won’t look at personal data and Google is asking for time to anonymize the information. If Judge Stanton’s ruling stands, the last shreds of personal privacy on the Web could be thrown out the window.

On this week’s EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet’s Larry Dignan and I discuss this week’s big stories. It was a busy week on the search front. Adobe is providing Google and Yahoo with Flash Player technology that allows their search engine crawlers to find and index SWF content, including Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus and self-contained Flash Web sites. It’s good to make more information accessible via search engines. However, Microsoft has been silent on whether Live Search would index Flash content.

In addition, Microsoft bought Powerset for about $100 million to enhance its search platforms. It’s not a substitute for acquiring market share via Yahoo Search, but it provides a foundation for making the search experience far more compelling and precise in fewer clicks.

Digg’s Kevin Rose, fresh off his prediction that Apple has a new iPod Nano design in store for next week, shares word from an unnamed source on Wednesday that Apple plans to introduce iTunes 8 at the same event. “iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don’t already have,” Rose’s tipster wrote.

I’m a little curious as to how that would actually work: by genre? By tempo? By finding like-minded artists?

(Credit:
Tom Krazit/CNET News)

Add another possibility to the list of possible announcements at
Apple’s iPod event next week: a new version of iTunes.

Would your Biggie and Tupac songs be put together in a playlist because they are both rap tracks? Or would Biggie’s songs be put together with your Velvet Underground tracks because they are both from New York? Do Britney and Christina go together? Or Pink Floyd and The Grateful Dead?

The current iTunes visualizer could be replaced by a newer one. Trippy.

The use of the word “Genius” is also a little curious, given that Apple already uses that term to describe its army of customer service representatives at its retail stores. Still, such a feature would be convenient, even if it takes half the fun out of making mixes.

Rose also reports that iTunes 8 will allow you to view your library as a grid, download HD television shows from the iTunes Store, and “enjoy a stunning new music visualizer” that I’ll guess was designed to go along with your new Pink Floyd/Grateful Dead playlist.

The product: It’s a service the mobile phone carriers can use to make their Web pages actually useful for their customers. Instead of just showing a bunch of marketing pitches and the minutiae of the customer’s bill, a Skydeck-powered site shows phone users who they talk to, either in chronological order or by frequency, and in an extremely comprehensible format. For users whose phones have the necessary software enabled (SyncML), it will also let them manage their phone address books.

Why the business won’t work: Because CEO Jason Devitt is angry at his potential customers, and makes no bones about it in public or in front of Congress. At the Supernova conference Monday, his presentation had a visible effect on the gentleman from Verizon I was sitting next to. “Carrier sites suck,” Devitt said, and the guy next to me took sharp notice. “There oughta be a law,” that makes the sites more useful, he continued, and the Verizon rep just started shaking his head.

See also:
Braving the telecom lobbyist backlash, by Jason Devitt for News.com
Skydeck API: Turn Your Phone Bill Into a Facebook Application (Mashable)

Devitt is right, of course. The mobile carriers don’t leverage the Web. They’re certainly not wise in the ways of Facebook. But being right is one battle; running a business is another. It’s one thing for a guy like me to say that the carriers suck at Internet. I’m not trying to get contracts with them. Devitt is–or should be. He might win over end users one by one, but success for Skydeck lies in the big deals. It’s going to be a long road to winning those giant carrier contracts if he keeps insulting potential customers and attacking their lobbyists in front of congress.

Skydeck makes a very cool product, but it is destined for smallness.

Add-ons for social-network sites let users coordinate their online networks with their phone’s dialing directory. Very useful.

Here is Devitt’s articulate 2007 rant to Congress:

A better phone bill.

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Skydeck)