Right Before Our Eyes

By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
20 February 2008

"When you hear hoofbeats," the old saying goes, "think horse, not zebra." But what if your horse suddenly grows zebra stripes? That's the predicament astronomers faced when a star they were observing--a rapidly spinning remnant of a supernova called a pulsar--started emitting powerful bursts of x-rays considered the hallmark of a much-rarer object called a magnetar. The finding strongly suggests that pulsars, also known as neutron stars, and magnetars are linked and paves the way for a better understanding of stellar evolution.

Pulsars are the dense cores left over after stars of a certain mass explode into supernovae. Weighing as much or more than the sun but only as big as asteroids, they can rotate tens or even hundreds of times a second (versus once a day for Earth). Sky surveys have identified about 1800 pulsars within the Milky Way, most of which emit pulsing radio signals that rise and fall as the pulsars spin.

The stripe-changing pulsar, named PSR J1846-0258, lies about 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. A team of researchers from NASA and elsewhere were observing it using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) spacecraft when the star suddenly erupted in a blast of x-rays. The display, reported online today in Science, made PSR J1846-0258 a candidate for being a magnetar--a type of neutron star with an enormously powerful magnetic field. Magnetars, so rare that only a dozen or so have been discovered, routinely emit high-energy x-rays and even gamma rays. But no one had ever observed a pulsar emitting such bursts.

"The bursts were completely unexpected," says astrophysicist and lead author Fotis Gavriil of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Because PSR J1846-0258 is a very young pulsar (a mere 1000 years old) and because its magnetic field strength is considerably lower than those from bona fide magnetars, Gavriil says, the researchers suspect it is still evolving. He says the discovery raises important questions about the two types of stars: Do pulsars behave like magnetars only periodically and then revert? Did all magnetars originate as pulsars? "We really need to follow this source, and others like it, to answer these questions," he says.

Astrophysicist Duncan Lorimer of West Virginia University in Morgantown calls the discovery "fantastic." A decade ago, he says, very little was known about any connections between pulsars and magnetars. Now, Lorimer says, the evolutionary connections between the two are strengthening, and observations like this one will help "elucidate our understanding of what happens to a young neutron star after its birth in a supernova." And astrophysicist Robert Duncan of the University of Texas, Austin, calls the findings "fascinating and important," because they represent the first time that magnetically generated x-rays have been seen coming from a rotationally driven pulsar. Duncan, who developed the theoretical behavior of magnetars in 1992, says he is not so sure the object will turn out to be a magnetar, but "neutron stars are constantly surprising scientists, so future observations ? will certainly be interesting."

Related sites

More about pulsars

More about magnetars

RXTE home page

Navigating Uncertain Seas

By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
11 February 2008

Ocean circulation patterns might well be shifting due to climate change, but one researcher argues that those alterations remain well beyond the capabilities of scientists to detect. If he's right, researchers might have to wait years if not decades for the right answers.

Ever since scientists began worrying about the effects of global warming, they have planted sensing equipment all over the planet designed to help track changes in the air and sea. In many parts of the oceans, such equipment includes arrays of buoys that transmit data on current speed, direction, and depth, along with other measurements. Researchers feed the incoming data into computer models, which churn out predictions about future climate developments. Based on the data and the models, some scientists have concluded that major ocean currents--such as those that slowly circulate deep-ocean water to the surface and back down again--are beginning to change speed and direction, presumably in response to the warming climate. It's a critical issue because significant changes in ocean currents could impact regional weather patterns all over the globe--think El Ni%26ntilde;o.

Not so fast, says oceanographer Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He has analyzed the available historical data on ocean currents and compared them with calculations predicting the currents' natural variability--or how they change direction, speed, and temperature periodically--without climate-change-induced influences. As Wunsch reports online this week in Nature Geoscience, the data aren't nearly comprehensive enough to permit researchers to draw even a preliminary conclusion about how or if climate change is affecting ocean currents.

The problem, Wunsch explains, is that "the ocean is very noisy," meaning it is "always changing, everywhere, all the time." The behavior of every cubic kilometer of ocean is governed by a combination of Earth's rotation, solar radiation, wind, temperature, salinity, depth, and ocean-floor and shoreline topography, as well as other factors, all responding to very long time scales. But because the historical database is so relatively short, he says, it's almost impossible to find a recognizable trend "that is not just a temporary shift." His recommendation: Researchers need to collect more data and for decades longer.

Physical oceanographer Brian Arbic of the University of Texas, Austin, says the paper is important because it takes the first "quantitative look at a large potential source of error" in the database of ocean currents. Wunsch's findings demonstrate how difficult it is to "directly estimate changes in the ocean's overturning circulation," adds physical oceanographer Terrence Joyce of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. The results are bound to be bad news for "government end users and popular media wanting quick, simple answers" on global warming's impact, he says.

Related site

More about ocean currents

Yahoo Says Rhapsody Will Handle Its Digital Music

Internet media company Yahoo said on Monday its music service will now be handled by Rhapsody America, an on-demand subscription service run by RealNetworks and Viacom. According to Yahoo, which previously said it would replace its in-house built Yahoo Music Unlimited service, it would migrate customers to Rhapsody over the coming months, while allowing subscribers to access their music library from a new Rhapsody account. The strategic partnership was announced after Microsoft made a $44.6 billion bid on Friday to take over Yahoo. It raises questions about whether RealNetworks and Yahoo will be able to execute their new partnership if Microsoft succeeds in buying Yahoo. Microsoft and RealNetworks were locked in a bitter and protracted antitrust dispute for eight years until Microsoft agreed to settle with RealNetworks for $761 million in October 2005. RealNetworks Founder and CEO Rob Glaser is a former Microsoft executive. In addition, Microsoft already has a comprehensive range of digital media products and services, including an online music store and its Zune digital media players. Dan Sheeran, a senior vice president at RealNetworks, said any conflicts with Microsoft are two years old and both companies would proceed with their agreement. Like Microsoft, RealNetworks sees the value of a partnership with Yahoo as a way to get in front of more than 23 million monthly Internet users. "This really works to make Rhapsody much more available to a much wider audience," said Sheeran. Yahoo Music's monthly subscribers, who currently pay around $9 a month, will eventually be charged around $12.99 a month for Rhapsody when their existing contracts expire. But paid services have to compete with an increasing array of free music services such as social radio site Last.fm and Imeem.com, which both offer variations of on-demand services. They also compete against illegal free services. Sheeran said that although Rhapsody has become more flexible and offers more free music on a limited Web service, it has no intention of dropping its paid subscription business. In August, Viacom's MTV Networks, RealNetworks and Verizon Communications said they would create a digital music service called Rhapsody America, which would compete with Apple's successful iTunes online store. Verizon Wireless, jointly owned by Verizon and Vodafone Group, is the exclusive wireless distributor for Rhapsody's digital content. Yahoo also said on Monday it acquired privately held FoxyTunes, a company that developed a toolbar plug-in application that enables users to control more than 30 desktop and Web-based music players.

Vista SP1, Windows 2008 'Released to Manufacturing'

Microsoft announced this week it has released both Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008 to manufacturing %26#150; the final stage before a product actually gets into users' hands. In the case of SP1, at least, there is one catch. If you're waiting on the edge of your seat, you still have a while to sit on your hands -- until mid-March. Meanwhile, Windows Server 2008 %26#150; Vista's server counterpart -- has also been released to manufacturing (RTM) and will be available for purchase to new customers starting March 1, the company said in a statement. Volume licensing customers with Software Assurance or Enterprise Agreements can download the server near the end of February. "Vista SP1 is something all of our customers on the business side have been waiting for %26#91;so%26#93; we can now ring the SP1 bell," CEO Steve Ballmer said during a meeting with financial analysts Monday morning that was Web cast. Ballmer was referring to enterprise customers' penchant for waiting for the first service pack of a major Microsoft operating system upgrade before beginning wide-scale deployment. Officially, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008 will be launched at Microsoft's planned "Heroes Happen Here" event in Lost Angeles on February 27. Visual Studio 2008 became generally available last week. At the same time, delivery of SQL Server 2008, the third product being launched at the end of this month, has been postponed until the third quarter, the company disclosed late last month. Meanwhile, after more than four months of testing, and repeated test releases, it's a little hard for some analysts to get excited about the final release of Vista SP1, but it's important nonetheless, not least because Vista and Windows Server 2008 have been positioned by Microsoft as complementary operating systems offerings. Gaining synergy "It's a good sign that they're done, and done at the same time, particularly for those people who want to gain any synergies from running the two products together," Michael Cherry, lead analyst for operating systems at researcher Directions on Microsoft, told InternetNews.com. Both Vista and Windows Server 2008 share the same software core, as well as having some key interlocking features such as Network Address Protection or NAP, which quarantines new devices on the network until they have met specified security requirements. Microsoft has seemingly taken its time getting Windows Server 2008 done. The first "release candidate" or RC of the server software was released to testers simultaneously last fall with the first beta test copies of Vista SP1. The delay in providing Vista SP1 to customers has to do with coordinating availability across various distribution channels, according to a posting on the Windows Vista Team Blog Monday by Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows product management. That includes PC OEMs, retail packaged product, and download sites. "In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1," Nash's post read. "In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically," he added. However, a small set of specific device drivers known to not follow Microsoft's guidelines for driver installation can cause problems for some users, and thus the delay. "We will begin making SP1 available through Windows Update in mid-March, giving us time to work with some of our hardware partners to make adjustments to the installation process for the affected drivers," Nash said. Besides its connection with Vista, the release of Windows Server 2008 is important for another key strategic reason. "This starts the countdown clock for Hyper-V," Microsoft's hypervisor-based virtualization technology, Directions on Microsoft's Cherry said. Hyper-V, Microsoft's challenge to VMware and Citrix's XenSource virtualization hypervisors, is due out 180 days after availability of Windows Server 2008. "Now, you can start to calculate availability of Hyper-V," Cherry added.

MySpace Unveils Developer Platform

MySpace plans to celebrate the launch of its Developer Platform Site today with a gala event at its new San Francisco offices, offering developers a sandbox full of APIs to develop and test their widgets, before they become available to the public a month later. "The goals for the platform at this point are to make sure that developers have all the information they need to start really developing" a robust stack of applications in advance of the public rollout in March, said Kyle Brinkman, vice president and general manager of MySpace's developer platform. That way, when MySpace users first access the Application Gallery next month, it will already be populated with thousands of tested, secure widgets they can add to their pages, Brinkman told InternetNews.com. In addition to being listed in the gallery, each widget will have a profile page, so users will be able to "befriend" applications. Users will be able to embed applications on their pages so all their friends can see them, or keep them invisible so they are only for their own use. MySpace formally announced that it would create a "sandbox" for developers in October, following on the tremendous success that its smaller but faster-growing rival Facebook has enjoyed with its own platform. Last week, the company opened its developer site for pre-registration, promising a live test environment to work out the bugs. MySpace will support third-party efforts with a blog to provide news, product updates and the opportunity to interact with its own development team. Additionally, outside developers will be able to talk with each other on a forum section of the site. The tools that MySpace is giving its developers fall into three categories: OpenSocial APIs with specific MySpace extensions for JavaScript and HTML applications; action scripts to enable flash to run with APIs; and a RESTful (DEFINE:REST) back end for server-to-server communication to accelerate processing speeds. The platform site will take all comers, from independent developers to large companies, and Brinkman said that the thousands of pre-registrations that MySpace has already processed run the spectrum. At this point, security is the only reason why MySpace would block a developer from placing a widget on the site. "The only thing we're going to be screening for is a security review," Brinkman said. In advance of the public launch, MySpace will scan every application for malicious code. Once the platform goes live, MySpace might not be able to come through the code of every widget developers submit, but it will deploy a new security tool developed by Google to safeguard against malicious applications. The product is called Caja, and Brinkman described it as a "JavaScript sanitizer." The MySpace development platform will be a coming out party for Caja; Google expects the tool to guarantee trusted content of third-party applications on sites across the social Web. The goal is to ensure security without watering down the functionality of JavaScript -- the "lingua franca of Web applications," Brinkman said. Applications will be governed by the same privacy controls that are in place for members," MySpace CTO Aber Whitcomb said in a statement. "An application will never have access to information that cannot be found on any member's profile page," he added, taking care to point out that MySpace would not engage in the behavioral tracking that Facebook built into its controversial Beacon ad program. However, monetization is an important part of MySpace's long-awaited developer platform. At first, developers will have to place ads themselves on the "canvas," or primary page of their application, keeping 100 percent of the revenues themselves. Soon after the widgets go live, Brinkman said that MySpace will offer developers its own HyperTargeting and SelfServe applications to help monetize their widgets through managed ad inventory, with MySpace taking a slice of the revenue. Following today's developer event in San Francisco, MySpace will hold similar kickoff rallies in London and Berlin.

Device Gives New Meaning to "Power Walking"

By Devin Powell
ScienceNOW Daily News
7 February 2008

The latest fad in self-powered wrist wear is the kinetic watch, a device that converts the momentum of a swinging arm into milliwatts. But researchers have unveiled a new accessory for your knees that puts the trendy timepiece to shame. Generating more than 1000 times more energy, the "Biomechanical Energy Harvester" may provide a green way to power the portable devices of the future.

Every time you take a step, you use two different groups of powerful muscles connected to the knee. The first group pushes to kick the lower leg out. Just before full extension, the second group pulls to put the brakes on. But for Max Donelan, director of the Simon Fraser University Locomotion Laboratory in Burnaby, Canada, and his colleagues, this braking process is just useful energy going to waste. His team has created a modified knee brace with a drive train that converts the mechanical energy into electricity. "A similar principle is used in hybrid cars to make electricity when you press the brakes; it's called generative braking," says Donelan.

Six volunteers wore the braces while they walked on treadmills. Embedded sensors detected the angle and velocity of their legs, switching the device on only during the braking phase of each swing. As the team reports tomorrow in Science, the braces produced 5 watts of power--enough to run 10 cell phones. And although it took a bit more effort to swing the added weight of the brace--the prototype weighs 1.6 kg--the walkers didn't have to work harder when the power-harvesting mechanism was turned on. The amount of oxygen they consumed--a measure of metabolism and effort--didn't increase. "Our generator actually helps your muscles out," says Donelan, "by decelerating your limbs for you."

If the researchers can lighten the load of the device, the first users will likely be people whose lives depend on reliable, portable power: patients with insulin pumps, for example. Douglas Weber, a team member and mechanical engineer at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania, believes that it will also be incorporated into the design of cutting-edge neuroprostheses--artificial limbs directly controlled by brainwaves and deep-brain stimulators for Parkinson's disease patients. Eventually, the device might prove useful for anyone off the main power grid: soldiers, relief workers, hikers, even normal folks with cell phones and personal digital assistants.

According to Lawrence Rome, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania who designed a biomechanical backpack years ago (ScienceNOW, 8 September 2005), this is the most sophisticated attempt to harness biomechanical energy to date. "Other people have thought about trying to get energy out of joints," says Rome, "but only Donelan and his team saw the opportunity to use braking motion." He wonders what other powerful joints we could tap for energy--shoulders, maybe, or even elbows.

Related sites

More on the biomechanics of muscles

Biomechanical shoes

More about neural prostheses

NIH Environmental Institute Chief Resigns

By Jocelyn Kaiser
ScienceNOW Daily News
8 February 2008

David Schwartz, the embattled director of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH?s) environmental health institute, resigned today after a stormy 3-year tenure to head a research program in Colorado. He explained that he could not serve as an effective leader of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) after "disenfranchising" some scientists.

Schwartz, a pulmonary disease researcher, drew controversy soon after he left Duke University in 2005 to head the nearby NIEHS in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Environmentalists, scientists, and some lawmakers protested when he wanted to privatize the institute's journal and shift funds from disease prevention to clinical studies. But the real trouble began when an inquiry by Congress revealed that Schwartz was consulting for law firms and had built up a large personal lab despite concerns from NIH ethics officials. Schwartz temporarily stepped down as director in August and had been serving in an advisory role to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni while the agency reviewed NIEHS management (ScienceNOW, 20 August 2007).

In an e-mail today to NIEHS staff, Schwartz explained that his reasons for leaving were "simple": NIEHS "would be more successful with new leadership," he wrote, and he "would have a greater impact in environmental health by working as a physician-scientist." In addition, Schwartz wrote, "our community has not universally embraced the scientific direction or strategies that I have implemented" and that he had "inadvertently disenfranchised segments of our community," for which "I sincerely apologize."

Schwartz has apparently landed on his feet. He is leaving this spring for the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, Colorado, a world-renowned center for research on respiratory diseases. He will head a new genetics research center and also direct the pulmonary and critical-care division. Gilbert Omenn of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who served on a search committee that recommended Schwartz for NIEHS director, says his problems there were "unfortunate" but that his move to Denver is "terrific for National Jewish and terrific for him."

Although no longer director, Schwartz will continue running his lab at NIH until he leaves for Colorado, probably in late May, said NIH spokesperson John Burklow. Acting director Samuel Wilson remains in charge of NIEHS until a new director is appointed. "We're looking at next steps and hope to fill the position quickly," says Burklow. He says NIH's review of NIEHS management should be released soon.

Related site

NIEHS

Tracking The Virtual Primary

It's Super Tuesday -- the biggest day yet in the run-up to the presidential campaign. With 24 states holding their nominating contests today, by tomorrow we could have a much better idea of who will be his (or her) party's standard-bearer come November. In what many have called both the most interesting and important presidential election in recent memory, the Internet is ablaze with political news, videos, real-time polling and a clutch of other interactive bells and whistles befitting the campaign that made the political Web a reality. The Washington Post Company is seizing on the opportunity to roll out an ambitious interactive approach to its political coverage. Starting at 6:00 tonight, washingtonpost.com and Newsweek will begin a six-hour online video broadcast of the election returns. "As leaders in political news and online technology, we are going to try something new this election season," Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, said in a statement. "This is an innovative news experience that could help shape the future of online news." The coverage will feature comments and analysis from the top political reporters at the Post and Newsweek, as well as writers from the company's Web properties Slate and The Root. Interactive maps with polls and delegate counts will be available, and viewers will be able to ask questions in live video discussions with the reporters and analysts. Washingtonpost.com is also offering mobile phone alerts with updates from key primaries and caucuses for interested citizens who can't get to a computer or television. Google's YouTube has created an area of its site dedicated to Super Tuesday coverage in its YouChoose '08 content channel. The site features a map of the United States (powered by Google Maps, of course) with icons that expand into political videos from users in states holding primaries today. Those videos include clips from candidates, voters and local news organizations. Among the social Web sites, YouTube already holds a prominent position in the political arena, having partnered with CNN to co-host a Democratic and a Republican debate. Additionally, each of the major candidates has harnessed the power of viral distribution to circulate campaign ads through YouTube. Google has also partnered with microblogging site Twitter to provide a real-time forum for folks to share their voting experiences. Similar to the YouTube feature, Google's Twitter tie-in for Super Tuesday overlays user-submitted posts on a Google Maps image of the country, offering brief, location-based blurbs about users' experiences. Additionally, Google has created an "elections" section on its own Google News page, complete with a news feed and an election map. Once the polls begin closing this evening, Google will start adding real-time returns to its maps. MySpace perhaps has been the most political of the social networks, thanks to its series of presidential dialogues -- during which candidates respond to MySpace users' questions in real time. Each of the major candidates has set up a MySpace page; Sen. Barak Obama (D-Ill.) has one page for each of the 50 states. On Facebook, where each of the major candidates also has profile pages, members are invited to respond to Super Tuesday opinion polls and follow news coverage of the primaries through the U.S. Politics application, a co-branded venture with ABC News. The application offers a side-by-side comparison of polling from ABC News set against the pulse of the Facebook community. One survey asks Facebook members if they think that today's primaries will determine which candidate each party will nominate. (At press time, 56 percent voted "Yes for Republicans, no for Democrats"; 27 percent voted "No for both parties.") Not all candidates are taking advantage of the Web equally, however. Obama, for instance, seems very much at home using the social Web, said Janel Landis, senior director of search development strategy at SendTec, an online marketing consultancy. According to SendTec's research, Obama has done the best job of engaging younger voters through social networks and other online channels. "Barak Obama was the early adopter when it came to online marketing as part of his campaign strategy," Landis told InternetNews.com. A comparison of the two Democrats' MySpace profile pages supports that theory: Obama has 255,976 friends; Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has 175,629 friends. Additionally, SendTec has been studying the candidates' search-engine marketing strategies. Landis said that the Obama campaign has been much more active in bidding on search terms than Clinton. However, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has outdone them all. Sponsored links to McCain ads appear in a Google search for terms like "immigration reform," "Republican candidate" and even "Rudy Giuliani." Landis told InternetNews.com that McCain had also undertaken a strategic geotargeting search campaign, bidding higher on queries placed by searchers in pivotal states in today's primaries, like California. Many of the candidates have promoted informational videos about how and where to vote, Landis said. Inexplicably, it appeared that none had bid on two of the most popular search terms so far on Super Tuesday: "where to vote," and "where do I vote" -- Nos. 7 and 9, respectively, according to Google Trends.

Report: Enterprise Search Will Top $1 Billion by 2010

The enterprise search market has been "revitalized," according to a Gartner report released Tuesday. Gartner said new features and the ability to handle a broader range of structured data, have made enterprise search more appealing to large companies. The enterprise search market gained a particularly high profile last month when Microsoft announced its plans to acquire Norway's Fast Search and Transfer (FAST) for $1.2 billion. Total software revenue worldwide from enterprise search will reach $989.7 million this year, up 15 percent from 2007, according to Gartner. By 2010 Gartner forecasts the market will grow to $1.2 billion. While the rate of growth will slow to low double digits over the next few years, Gartner research director Tom Eid notes enterprise search is a huge market. "We're forecasting consolidation with more mergers and acquisitions like Microsoft and FAST," Eid told InternetNews.com. "In that scenario it's not uncommon for the acquiring vendor to have a collective slowdown to get its roadmap together and figure out what features and products it's going to bring forward." Gartner's rough estimate of enterprise search leaders through 2006 places Autonomy first with a 21 percent share, followed by FAST/Microsoft and Google at 18 and 15 percent, respectively. Endeca and IBM round out the top five at 6 and 4 percent. After those five, Eid notes, there are 50 or more other vendors in a very fragmented market. "It's very different from ERP and other enterprise segments where the biggest vendors have a lot of control," said Eid. "In Enterprise search there is a lot of competition at the top and at the other end, a lot of specialized players in sectors like pharmaceuticals and retail." There is also very distinct technology at work among competitors. "Google has its appliance model which offers 'good enough' functionality at a price that can't be beat in the enterprise," said Eid. "It's a very different approach than Autonomy or FAST which offer very high-end technology platforms." Growth areas prompting wider adoption of enterprise search include e-discovery requirements and the ability to obtain better information from structured data repositories. Eid says most large companies deploy some level of enterprise search technology already, but there is plenty of opportunity for growth. "It's not deployed the way email is enterprise-wide," he said. "Search and information access is not a one-size-fits-all market. He notes, for example, different departments within an organization might have very distinct requirements.

Microsoft-Yahoo: Will it Work?

It may be the right move on paper, but making it work isn't going to be easy. That was the general consensus among several analysts following Friday's blockbuster announcement of Microsoft's $44.6 billion takeover bid for Yahoo. "If Microsoft and Yahoo join forces it will be the most important event in the Internet industry this year, without a doubt," said Ken Cassar, vice president for industry solutions analytics at Nielsen Online. According to Cassar, the combined entity would be visited by 86 percent of U.S. Internet users, account for 15 percent of all time spent online, and represent 59 percent of online display ad impressions sold which he said is "really the most significant revenue generator today for most online publishers." But even if Yahoo execs and its board sign off on the deal, not a given, there are still many unanswered questions %26#150; not the least of which is whether antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe will approve. A Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo has been rumored for months, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed on a conference call early Friday that talks had been going on between the two companies for 18 months. In addition, there are no guarantees that such a merger would accomplish much more than move Microsoft from a far third-place in search engine usage to a still far second-place by gobbling up its nearest competitor. Web statistics tracking firm NetApplications' search engine statistics for January 2008 show Google way out in front with 77 percent of global searches, followed by Yahoo with just over 12 percent, and Microsoft trailing way behind with a total of slightly more than 6 percent divided between MSN and Live Search. A combination of Yahoo and Microsoft would control less than 20 percent of the entire market. Of course, while not directly convertible into cash, search share is a strong indicator of how many advertising dollars those searches yield for ad purveyors. Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin is bullish on the potential of a Microsoft/Yahoo combination. He notes Yahoo is actually stronger than Google on the content side and has good partnerships with DSL providers. "When you bring both company's research groups together and you can imagine a powerful set of engineering teams working on the next generation of search," Bajarin told InternetNews.com. "There's a real need for something more precise than what we have in the market today." A Google spokesperson said it would be "premature" to comment on Microsoft's proposed purchase of Yahoo. For Microsoft, the acquisition stands to help it put its online services businesses in the black. Microsoft announced last week that in the first two quarters of fiscal 2008, its online services initiatives lost $510 million. That includes $245 million in losses for the quarter ended December 31. In contrast, Yahoo brought in income of $206 million in the final calendar quarter of 2007. Which is not to say Yahoo doesn't need help. Whereas Yahoo's revenues have been declining, Microsoft overall had another record quarter in terms of revenues and earnings. Between increasing revenues and its huge cash horde, Microsoft is well set to absorb the expenses involved in buying out Yahoo. "Yahoo was in trouble %26#91;and%26#93; they were really losing direction chasing Google %26#91;because%26#93; nobody could be a better Google than Google," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told InternetNews.com.

Open Wireless Network Looms on Horizon

Thanks to an unidentified bidder in the FCC's closely watched wireless spectrum auction, it's now all but guaranteed that an open wireless network will emerge in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission, which is not revealing bidders' identifies, on Thursday said it had received a $4.7 billion offer for a block of frequencies in the 700MHz band. Since the bid meets the FCC's reserve price, it puts into play an important rule governing the auction: The spectrum winner now must allow any devices and any applications on the frequencies. That now stands to unleash both unlimited possibilities for wireless services as well as fears that the possibilities may be undercut if the high bidder isn't fully behind the notion of an open network. "The dream of the 700MHz band is that you can walk into Best Buy and everything in there is wireless," said Amol Sarva, co-founder and CEO of Txtbl, a wireless start-up in New York and leader of the Wireless Founders Coalition for Innovation. "However, this may end up looking like your broadband experience at home, and nobody likes their cable company," Sarva said. "It would be one step short of the dream." In an effort to stimulate competition in broadband delivery and innovation in the wireless industry, the FCC decided last year that the winner of one subset of 700MHz frequencies -- known as the C Block -- must allow any devices and any applications on the network. Google led the charge for these and other open network requirements, and public interest groups lauded the company's plans. The requirements would have been dropped, however, had the minimum-acceptable bid of $4.6 billion not been received. Now that minimum has been exceeded, however, application developers, entrepreneurs and start-up companies will have the freedom to begin experimenting. How might an open network change things? For instance, today's Internet-enabled mobile phones and in-car navigation systems use wireless networks. But the closed networks on which they operate limit their functionality and availability, locking them into carrier-sanctioned features while excluding non-approved devices and applications. "Pretty much every consumer electronics device you can imagine stands to be improved by having some wireless functionality," said Jason Devitt, CEO of Skydeck, a mobile services start-up in San Mateo, Calif. "The point is to give innovators and entrepreneurs the chance to come out with as broad of range of ideas as possible, as opposed to a handful of executives sitting in office suites." Industry experts compare the new opportunities to those brought about by the introduction of competition in plain old telephony. Today, it's hard to even recall the day when the only phone available was a plain, black model plugged into the wall -- with a price dictated by the phone company. "If you allow third-party device makers to come in, you don't have the network provider picking winners and losers in handsets," said Gigi Sohn, president of the public interest group Public Knowledge. "It's like regular telephones -- I can buy a telephone for $7 today."
Will the real bidder please stand up? While auction bidding is anonymous, analysts speculated that of the 214 participants, Google, Verizon Wireless, AT%26T and Echostar were the most likely to be interested in the C Block. Several analyst groups, including UBS, speculated on Thursday that Verizon Wireless likely placed the $4.7 billion bid, and that it is unlikely to be outbid. Ironically, Verizon Wireless, along with AT%26T, initially fought the open network rules. Verizon went so far as to file a lawsuit against the FCC, alleging that the conditions would violate the First Amendment. Almost immediately, the wireless industry's largest lobbying group, CTIA, filed a similar suit against the commission. Yet seemingly in a dramatic about-face, Verizon Wireless in October dropped its suit and began outlining plans to become more open. Still, given the incumbent phone companies' track record on openness and innovation, public interest groups would rather see Google win the spectrum. Additionally, Google unsuccessfully sought a requirement to make the C Block frequencies available at wholesale prices, which would have created an opportunity for even more providers to offer services. "I do think that Google is dedicated to not only open platform but also wholesaling," Sohn said. "I think it benefits them to have more broadband providers in the mix than fewer. But if Verizon gets %26#91;the spectrum%26#93;, Verizon doesn't compete with itself." Some industry observers expect that if a large network like Verizon wins the C Block spectrum, it will incorporate it into its existing network -- along with the restrictions that entails. Fortunately for open-network advocates, since the FCC established the open network conditions for the C Block, a number of wireless carriers have made public statements touting varying degrees of "openness" on their networks. In its own claims, Verizon Wireless said it expects later this year to give customers the option to use devices and applications offered by other companies. It also plans to sponsor a conference in March, focusing on the development of new devices to run on its existing network. Yet Verizon said in November it would still require device manufactures to submit to an approval process before their products can use its network. As a result, it's how unclear how unrestricted its network might become, and how open its C Block spectrum might be if it chooses to merge it with its existing business -- as some say is likely. "It makes sense for %26#91;Verizon%26#93; to not want to operate two business models," Devitt said. "It's not merely a question of saying you're open. The C Block gives them discretion. It's not as simple as it's open or it's closed." The FCC will release the identity of spectrum winners after the auction is closed, which could be several weeks or several months, depending on bidding in other blocks.

PHP 4 is Dead—Long Live PHP 5

PHP 4, deployed on tens of millions of servers globally, is among the most successful languages of all time. But its run is coming to an end. Active development for the scripting language has been discontinued and security updates will conclude in August. And for some developers, PHP 4 will be history before Valentine's Day. On February 5, a group of influential Open Source projects will collectively stop all new development on their respectively platforms using PHP 4. However, there are still some holdouts opposing a complete transition to PHP 5 and it's not entirely clear whether or not PHP 4 will ever truly disappear. PHP 5 isn't a new technology, either. But it's been the anointed successor to PHP 4 since PHP 5's initial launch in 2004. "We're confident in PHP 5," Andi Gutmans, CTO of Zend, PHP's lead commercial backer, told InternetNews.com. "We don't believe you can go to the modern web with AJAX, XML and Web Services with PHP 4, which is why we're definitely backing PHP 5 very strongly." PHP 5 includes many Web 2.0 optimizations that improve performance, management and scalability of XML, Web Services and other key Web 2.0 technologies. In Gutmans' view, there actually isn't a large PHP 4 user base out in the market today. However, there is a huge install base for PHP 4 applications. "Almost all of our customers are doing development in PHP 5," Gutmans said. "But obviously there is a huge installed based out there. If it works and you don't have to do development on it, there is no reason to switch versions." The deeper issue though is the fact that until February 5, there are still a large number of open source projects that still develop their applications with support for PHP 4. So far, projects running PHP 4 on their servers have not been driven to migrate to PHP 5. With its February 5 deadline for PHP switchover, The GoPHP5.org effort is hoping to change that paradigm. Robert Douglass co-author of Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress and longtime contributor to the open source Drupal project is helping to lead the GoPHP5.org effort. Douglass told InternetNews.com that Drupal has always been a fast, leading-edge project but, in his view, the continued need to support PHP 4 has held it back. And simply dumping PHP 4, won't necessarily solve all of the project's problems. Drupal has the goal of being an easily installable package that could be installed on a wide variety of hosts. The chicken or the egg? "There was a Catch-22," Douglass explained. "Hosts didn't seem to be driving toward adopting PHP 5, yet we wanted to move on to this new era of PHP development and we strongly felt that the hosts were holding us back." When Drupal looked at the problem a little closer, they realized that it wasn't just the hosts who were at fault but also the software providers because the majority provide software that is PHP 4 compatible. "We realized there was a chicken and egg problem," Douglass said. "The hosts didn't want to upgrade to PHP 5 until there was a critical mass of people using it. And for developers they didn't want to use PHP 5 until it was something that was a viable option for deployment with hosts." That's why GoPHP5.org was created%26#151;to get software developers together to collectively decide when it was time to move development to PHP 5. While the group is pushing for PHP 5 adoption, it's not asking developers to abandon their existing PHP 4 users. "We didn't expect any project to break software or say that people who want to stay with PHP 4 for older versions are out of luck," Douglass said. "Every project has it for themselves to decide when they want to stop supporting PHP 4 with existing versions of their software." Moving from PHP 4 to PHP 5 isn't as easy as just flipping a switch or ticking a tick box on a development environment. Douglass admitted there are several "generally known snafus and gotchas" that can complicate matters when moving from one version of PHP to the other. In his view, most of those issues aren't critical but some applications could have fatal errors and break. That's where focused PHP 5 development comes in. There are also those who oppose the GoPHP5.org effort, including the predictably named StopPHP5.org effort. On its Web site, StopPHP5.org claims that it will even pay hosts to stick with PHP 4. StopPHP5.org officials were not immediately available for comment. Douglass considers the StopPHP5.org site to be a spoof site and a form of flattery. While Douglass and his cohorts at GoPHP5 are all about moving to PHP 5, Douglass admitted that PHP 4 is likely to stick around for a long time. "I would expect PHP 4 use to taper off with new projects primarily launched in PHP 5," Douglass said. "Some projects will run on PHP 4 indefinitely. I wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years you would still find PHP 4. It does its job well and has had an enormous role in building the Internet."

Symantec Finds Scope of IT Risk Widening

Symantec has released is second-annual Risk Assessment survey and the results show that the definition of "risk" is expanding, as are the threats facing IT. The survey of 405 IT managers, undertaken between February and November 2007, found that their top concern is network availability -- with 78 percent citing it as a business-critical or serious risk. The finding marked the first time that network availability surpassed security among IT managers' concerns. Security, which 70 percent of IT managers said was business-critical or a serious concern, was followed by performance (68 percent) and compliance (60 percent). "That told us two things: respondents are taking a broader view of IT risk and what constitutes it and they are shifting away from just a security-oriented view to one of availability, compliance and performance," said Jennie Grimes, senior director of Symantec's IT risk management program office. But while IT managers' concerns are multiplying, confidence in their ability to keep a reign on things is slipping. More than half, 53 percent, said they expected a major IT incident related to those four issues. Yet only a third said they had good management, configurations and backup plans. Part of the reason for this is due to risk's increasing scope. A year ago, the industry considered risk incident to be hacking attacks. Now, the term includes human error -- like losing a laptop or backup tape, failing an internal audit and poor-performing applications. The other problem is that with so many laptops being lost or stolen and insecure technologies, ranging from instant messenger to USB thumb drives, entering the workplace, IT is getting away from the people who live by it. "I do believe the infrastructures are getting more complicated and I do believe that the notion of the perimeter of the network -- traditionally having been a physical thing -- is shifting to the human being and is causing complexity to increase," Grimes said. One possible reason for the drop in confidence is that the definition of IT and its influence on companies have also grown -- so much so that IT has become the lifeblood of firms. In recent years, the discussion among C-level executives has been how IT is expected to drive profits. Now the situation is beyond that, where companies simply can't function without it. "Organizations are realizing how much they rely on IT," Grimes said. For example, she said she noticed that many large firms now have a new executive in the ranks, the vice president of IT risk management, whose job is to deal with risks to the IT infrastructure. Grimes said she's met about 40 now, all relatively new to the position. What's different about them is that they all report to different superiors. Some report to the CIO or chief information security officer, some to legal and others to auditing and the controller. A few even report to the board of directors, she said. "When you see that kind of range, that shows most organizations understand that it has to have an owner or a driver of risk assessment in the organization, but most of them are still grappling with how to empower that singular owner," she added. "They know it has to be one person who holds the reigns but there is a lack of clarity of their responsibility." The way to get management to respond, they have learned, is to talk in business terms, she said. "I do think in the coming year you will see things around this enablement discussion," Grimes said. "Some of that will be IT risk managers realizing they have to change their language." One such example: An IT risk management executive may report a poor-performing e-commerce server in technical terms -- such as describing the slower response, the inability to handle large numbers of customers, or some kind of benchmark. That doesn't work. But when the IT risk management officer says the company loses about five percent of sales due to a poor performing server, "then you have their attention."

Dell To Cut Nearly 900 Jobs

Dell said on Thursday it will close its call center in Edmonton, Alberta in Canada and eliminate most of the facility's 900 jobs in the second quarter as it consolidates customer-service operations. Dell, the world's second-largest personal computer maker, also said it had decided to scrap plans to open a second customer service center in Ottawa. Most of the Edmonton center's workers will be laid off; some will be offered jobs at other company locations, Dell spokesman David Frink said. Dell has about 25 call centers worldwide. The Round Rock, Texas-based company announced plans in 2006 to spend more than $150 million and hire more than 2,000 workers to improve customer service after buyers complained about poor after-sales support from the company. Dell said in May that it would cut about 10 percent of the work force, or about 8,800 jobs, over 12 months to improve profit after founder Michael Dell regained the helm a year ago. The company has changed its consumer-sales strategy, selling PCs in about 10,000 retail outlets after 23 years of direct-only sales via the Internet or phone. The job cuts are "just part of the changes we are making across the company to enhance our efficiency," Frink said.

Visualize This: With So Much Video, It's Hard Not To

PALM DESERT, CALIF. -- Video was a hot topic here at the DEMO conference, with companies showing new ways to store, post, send, create and protect videos on the Web. Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur said watching video on the Web is a lot like staring at an aquarium: It's nice for a while, but there's no interactivity. Seesmic, a video-sharing site, changes all that. The company showed new features it plans to roll out later this year such as video reply and a version for mobile users. Although the service is not yet publicly available, more than 3,000 users have been actively testing it. Seesmic lets you post video entries to its site or send a link to your blog or services such as Twitter. Then others see what you're up to. Le Meur said Seesmic has users testing the service in 25 different countries and posting, on average, a new video about once every minute. Users can scroll or search through all the videos at Seesmic's home page or select from someone's profile to see videos. "We all want to follow our friends and have conversations; why not do it with video?" Le Meur said. Ironically, two of the presenting companies were working at cross-purposes: one effectively limiting certain types of video distribution on the Web and the other promising to greatly expand the market. Eyealike is a new service designed to help copyright holders identify their content on the Web posted illegally. "We've talked to the movie studios and the record companies, and they can't figure out how much infringement is going on at user-generated sites," said Greg Heuss, president of Eyealike. "The accuracy isn't where it needs to be." Enter Eyealike's Visual Search Platform, marketed as the first enterprise-class search platform for facial recognition, image detection, and video copyright surveillance. Heuss said Eyealike searches videos on an image-by-image, frame-by-frame basis, employing patent-pending technologies, including the company's facial-recognition system. Eyealike said it doesn't need to see the whole video either; it can, for example, spot a copyrighted clip inside an amateur video posted to YouTube. "It's a fast, scalable solution," said Heuss. At perhaps closer to the other end of the spectrum is TubeMogul, a provider of video distribution and analytics services. The company's new service provides amateur and professional video producers a one-stop shop for automatically distributing video to leading user-generated video sites such as YouTube. The basic distribution service is free and includes analytics on how many viewers are watching your video on what sites. The company charges for more advanced analytics. For the video producer, TubeMogul saves the time of having to upload separately to multiple media sites and provides a dashboard of analytics on viewership, which could be used to pitch potential advertisers or sponsors. TubeMogul is also pitching itself to media and advertising companies as an impartial source of information on which videos are doing well on the Web and where. "We help advertisers discover and unlock the top site inventory across the Net," TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson said. "No one else has this kind of cross-site video data."
Squidcast your videos Another site, Squidcast is for users more concerned with just getting family and friends to see their videos. It's designed to simplify the transfer of photos and videos from your computer to the Web. "We're not a social networking site," said Daniel Putterman, Squidcast's chairman, "we're more an extension of your e-mail." He added, "When you get into gigabyte-size files and all the new video formats, %26#91;traditional%26#93; e-mail can't keep up." Instead, consumers burn videos to DVDs to mail or post to sites with relatively low image quality. Squidcast said its free service supports high-definition videos and high-resolution images. The company's Collaborative Relay Network is a form of cloud computing that temporarily uses small amounts of end-user storage and bandwidth to form a personal distribution network it said is highly secure with advanced cryptographic features. To send a video, users simply type in the e-mail addresses of the recipients and drag the video file to the appropriate Squidcast page. Hit Send and Squidcast transfers the files. On the recipient's end, the file appears much like an e-mail attachment that you can click to play or download.