If you are considering buying an HP desktop computer, especially a low end business model, be sure to read this story, HP aggravates its failure rate, by Ed Foster, longtime author of the Gripe Line column/blog in InfoWorld.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

For WPP, an asset swap would allow the ad giant to shed itself of an ad-serving tool to publishers, a line of business that it apparently is less critical to its main operations, according to Advertising Age.

Microsoft’s forays into online ads may be focused on yet another deal, according to a report Monday in Advertising Age.

Microsoft unloads the agency in exchange for a WPP package that includes 24/7’s Open AdStream publisher ad-serving tool plus cash. While Avenue A’s price would be higher than most agency deals, very few interactive agencies with that kind of scale are available for acquisition.

Microsoft acquired interactive advertising agency Avenue A/Razorfish last year, as part of its $6 billion acquisition of Aquantive. That deal also included Atlas Media Console and Drive Performance Media, which were the core of the acquisition. Atlas provides digital marketing technologies, while Drive Performance Media buys online advertising inventory in bulk and resells it to advertisers based on their target markets.

Microsoft reportedly has restarted talks with ad giant WPP Group to sell its Avenue A/Razorfish agency to the advertising behemoth, but with a new twist, according to the report.

Advertising Age, citing sources familiar with the talks, said discussions now involve an asset swap, as opposed to an outright buy of Microsoft’s Avenue A/Razorfish operations:

Such a transaction would not be surprising, given Microsoft has been on the prowl for ways to bolster its search and advertising platform efforts, following the failed buyout talks earlier this year for Yahoo.

iPhone not so cheap after all.

(Credit:
Apple)

This new revenue-sharing plan is a departure from Apple’s previous deal with AT&T, where AT&T gave a portion of the monthly usage fees to Apple. Now Apple is in a much more traditional deal with AT&T, where the carrier subsidizes the phone upfront in hopes of earning back the cost of the phone over time.

It turns out there’s a reason behind the iPhone 3G’s dramatic price cut ($199 for the 8GB model)–AT&T has agreed to subsidize the phone in return for a $10 increase in monthly unlimited data plans. Unlimited 3G data plans for business users will cost $45 a month in addition to a voice plan, presumably because of a higher consumption of data. So even though the phone itself is cheaper, it will cost you more in the long run. That said, the faster 3G data service might be well worth it to most people.

The obvious first question one asks the AT&T execs when beginning a discussion of Pogo, the company’s new Web browser, is “What is AT&T doing getting into the browser market?” The answer you get is, at first, amusing. It’s a chance to build “another relationship with the customer,” they say. They also tell you it could be a great conduit for AT&T messages (e.g., brand or product advertising). Sounds like the makings for a truly awful product, does it not?

Video demo is embedded at the end of this post.

But here’s the weird thing: Pogo is not awful. Putting aside what might happen to the product should the AT&T brand Nazis get hold of it, it is, even in the early beta I got access to, a solid, usable Web browser.

Pogo is a combination of the Mozilla browser code base with technology from Vizible, which AT&T has invested in. As a basic Web browser, it works as expected. Type a URL and it loads. No drama.

Things only get weird when you dive into the browser bookmarks or history, or use the multi-home-page feature called Springboard.

The best use of Pogo's graphical chops is in the history viewer, which lets you smoothly scroll backward and forward through snapshots of your visited Web pages.

For these three functions, Pogo puts snapshot images, which it calls “cells,” into a slick 3D rendering engine. In the bookmark feature, for example, you can thumb through categories like flipping through index cards. When you zoom into a category, you see all your site bookmarks as snapshots of your pages, not just page titles.

The history function also uses visual snapshots. I found this very useful. Seeing your previously visited sites in graphic format added a lot of context that’s missing if all you’re looking at is a stream of titles.

You can set the browser’s home page to be your “springboard,” which is a grid of cells for sites you visit a lot. It’s a little better than having your browser start with several home pages in separate tabs, although it’s not a big enough feature that anyone should switch browsers for it.

You can fly through your bookmarks and the "collections" they are categorized in.

Pogo is a tabbed browser, but instead of using text tabs it uses little page snapshots. This may appeal to some people; I didn’t find it much of an advantage.

All cells, be they on the Springboard, the history, or bookmarks, can be tagged and moved around (you can drag history items to the Springboard, for example). The browser also has a search feature that scans for pages living in the the three sections just mentioned. For Web search, Pogo remembers the pages you visit from its integrated search engine (Google, currently), and saves them as cells, too.

Unrelated to its 3D features, the browser also supports mouse gestures for navigation, a fun feature that could become very useful if Pogo is ported to touch-screen mobile phones. (See also: Opera.)

Pogo does not support add-ons or plug-ins yet. Vizible built the browser with the older
Firefox 2 code from Mozilla. It is waiting for the Firefox 3 code, which it will re-configure its product in. Vizible will support plug-ins shortly after that.

While I’ve derided 3D interfaces in the past, the truth is that using the graphics power of a local computer can make for more engaging and easier-to-understand interfaces. See PicLens, a recently released plug-in photo browser, and also Flip3D in Vista, and Time Machine and CoverFlow on the
Mac. Finally, Picasa has a timeline view that’s very similar to the Collections view in Pogo.

Pogo’s 3D interface works because it doesn’t get in your face most of the time, and when it does, it’s in functions where using visual devices to jog your memory can make a positive difference in your productivity in the app.

That said, I do not expect Pogo to take the world by storm. It is a nice, slick, graphical browser. It’s probably an easier product to teach than the other browsers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it show up in the mail in AT&T DSL bills, or maybe even on some new computers. And that will be just fine. But it’s still weird that AT&T is in the browser business, and I don’t think this product will win the hearts and minds of people already accustomed to Firefox or Internet Explorer. Pogo is quite good, but it’s not so good that current heavy browser users are going to feel that they need to switch.

The pre-public version of Pogo that I tried was too slow to live with, but AT&T is planning on opening up a private beta in May with a newer build. We’ll have some invites to the beta to give out when that happens. Open availability is still three or four months out.

]]> http://www.merrifield-roberts.com/index.php/2010/08/21/att-launches-its-own-browser-pogo-surprise-it/feed/ http://www.merrifield-roberts.com/index.php/2010/08/21/driving-happily-in-a-subaru-on-road-trip-2008/ http://www.merrifield-roberts.com/index.php/2010/08/21/driving-happily-in-a-subaru-on-road-trip-2008/#comments Sat, 21 Aug 2010 05:39:37 +0000 admin http://www.merrifield-roberts.com/?p=160 This is the 2008 Subaru Outback 2.5 XT that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman drove on Road Trip 2008. Here, the car is parked in front of the Hank Williams Sr. boyhood home and museum in Georgiana, Ala.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

SAN FRANCISCO–I was sitting in a Costco here Wednesday night, waiting to have four new tires put on my 2001 Subaru Outback–after literally having just spent $900 on a tune-up and several other items. Paradoxically, I was thinking that Subaru makes a pretty good
car.

It was this very Subaru that I spent 16 days in two summers ago on Road Trip 2006, when I drove 3,279 miles around the Pacific Northwest. That year, CNET News let me try a driving trip in search of stories, but I had to take my own car and pay all my own expenses.

The trip was successful, though, and after my return, CNET suggested I should do it again the next summer–and that they’d pay my way the next time. Even better, we decided I should seek out a car company interested in providing a loaner vehicle to use on the trip.

Well, having taken my beloved Subaru with me in 2006, I thought the company might like to get involved for Road Trip 2007. I wrote Subaru, explained that I had taken my own 2001 Outback on Road Trip 2006, and asked if they were interested in giving me a loaner. The answer was an enthusiastic yes–particularly, it seemed, because they appreciated that I had done this project the first time in my own Subaru.

Without going into detail, we ended up going a different direction last year, with Infiniti as a sponsor. For Road Trip 2007, I took one of that company’s SUVs as I drove for 25 days around the Southwest.

But when I was planning Road Trip 2008, we decided I should reach out to Subaru again. To my surprise, and pleasure, they said they were interested in getting involved this year, despite our having gone with Infiniti in the end last year.

So on June 8, just after I touched down at Orlando International Airport, I went to a nearby parking lot. There, waiting for me, was a brand new Subaru Outback 2.5 XT, just waiting to be taken off on a grand adventure.

And if you’ve been following Road Trip 2008, you’ll know that’s just what happened. For the next several weeks, I drove that Subaru all over the South, covering 8 states, 4,593 miles and at least 25 different destinations.

My wife worried that after driving this brand new version of our own car, I would come home and demand that we trade it in. It’s an understandable fear, given that the new Subaru was a pleasure to drive and a very nice piece of automotive design.

The Subaru sits across from the power station at the Thurmond Dam in South Carolina.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

In many ways, the car was extremely familiar to me, given my own Outback. Many things, such as switches for moving the seats and opening the gas cap, as well as the general layout of the interior, were just like in my car.

But other things, such as the stereo, the cruise control system, and of course, the navigation system–there is none on my 2001 Outback–were quite different.

All in all, I really enjoyed the 2008 Outback. It is a very strong car that has an extremely smooth engine that is capable of quick acceleration at highway speeds or a nimble zig-zag around stopped traffic or a bottleneck in the road.

I’m no professional car reviewer, so my approach to sharing thoughts on the vehicle is likely very unlike that of someone who does this regularly would write. But having spent nearly a month in the car, and driven far enough to cross the United States and come halfway back, I certainly formed some impressions about it.

On the whole, I would heartily recommend this car, and it’s only because my own Subaru is still in fine shape that I’m not about to run out and try to get a new one.

I always felt safe driving this car. It felt solid and in control, even at high speeds, and a couple of times when I needed to slam the brakes, it came quickly to a stop.

Being a Subaru, of course, it handled extremely well even in wet conditions and on rough roads. Occasionally, it did seem a little sluggish, but that was definitely the exception. For the most part, I always expected, and mostly got, a strong boost of acceleration when I needed it.

If I had any complaints, it would have to do with the car’s navigation system. I hadn’t planned on using this very much, since I brought another one with me. But in the interest of simplicity and because I was so busy I never was able to get around to using the other one, I relied strictly on the Subaru’s onboard system.

During Road Trip 2008, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman drove the Subaru Outback 2.5 XT a total of 4,593.8 miles.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

This turned out to be a mixed bag.

Now, I know that any car navigation system is going to have some hiccups. But the Subaru’s system seemed a little bit more hit and miss than I would have liked.

It was actually quite odd. Sometimes, it would go for days and take me everywhere I needed to go with perfect precision. Other days, it would seem to really struggle.

On one leg of the journey, from Memphis, Tenn., to Clarksdale, Miss., the navigator took me on a route that turned out to be fairly well out of the way, and a longer drive. I had been in a real hurry to get out of town, so I hadn’t checked the route on a map and so I didn’t even realize.

Another time, when driving into Pensacola, Fla., instead of having me get off the freeway at the exit where my hotel was, it had me do a seven-mile circuit on back roads to arrive at the hotel. I couldn’t even begin to explain that one.

Of course, you’re always supposed to reality-check any route a car navigator gets you, so part of the blame is mine for not making sure it was sending me to the right place.

Still, after a rough beginning with the navigator–I was one more false route from “firing” it after a day or two–I came to expect it to steer me wrong, but still trusted it enough to use it. A contradiction, I know, but there you have it.

And to be sure, it got me where I needed to go much more often than it didn’t.

I think, in the end, that built-in car navigators are simply not as good as the ones you can buy on the aftermarket. I haven’t used them enough to prove that theory, but that’s my sense. So it might have nothing at all to do with this particular model.

I also had a couple of other small quibbles with the car, particularly in comparison to my own Subaru.

When I first picked the vehicle up, I noticed the automatic gear shift didn’t have a label for a first gear. So for the first day I had the car, I was running it in what I thought was drive, but it was revving extremely high. Only on the second day did I realize that I had been driving in first gear. If I hadn’t figured that out, it could have been a very short trip. On my car, the first gear is shown on the gear shift, and so this was a little confusing to me.

Similarly, on my car, using cruise control, there is a button that allows you to decelerate. This car didn’t allow that. Perhaps there’s a practical reason for that, but I’m not sure what it would be.

But these are little things. As I mentioned above, this was a great car, and I really loved it. It was hard to lock it up for the last time and leave it in the parking lot at Tampa International Airport, where I flew home from.

I hope that when I do Road Trip 2009, Subaru will consider its involvement with Road Trip 2008 worth it and lend me another car for my next long journey.

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

NEW YORK–MTV’s “Choose or Lose” pre-Super Tuesday event, co-hosted with MySpace and the Associated Press, marked my first time in a live studio audience. It sure has been a trip; there are cameras just about everywhere, and MTV packed us all in like sardines. Right above my head is a giant flashing red-and-blue lightning bolt; I’ve been trying to make sure I don’t smack against it.

MTV News anchor Gideon Yago introduced the candidates, all of whom were dialed in via videoconference from around the country: Barack Obama from Minneapolis; Hillary Clinton from Tucson, Ariz.; Ron Paul from Victoria, Texas; and Mike Huckabee from Montgomery, Ala. The event was structured as a “dialogue,” not a debate, so each candidate answers questions individually.

Huckabee was the first candidate up, and the first question he asked was about how he would handle “sweeping change” like the sort that Democratic candidate Obama, a favorite among young voters, has promised. The former Arkansas governor focused on the economy, a theme that he retained through the rest of his answers. “Real change is all about making sure that the government knows it’s supposed to work for us, and not the other way around,” Huckabee answered, and started talking about shaking up the tax structure. “People in the student generation have a nine trillion dollar debt on top of their heads.”

In between questions, moderators brought up live polling questions that were simultaneously conducted online as well as questions submitted through MySpace instant messages and MTV News’ Web site.

Huckabee did seem slightly taken aback when he was asked to answer a question coming from a MySpaceIM user named “TurnMyLipsBlue.”

TorrentSpy attorney Ira Rothken

Ira Rothken has defended TorrentSpy since 2006, when it was accused in a lawsuit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) of encouraging copyright infringement. In an interview with CNET News.com on Wednesday night, Rothken said the judge’s decision was an “abuse of discretion” and suggested that the large dollar amount was an attempt to draw attention to the case.

“What is really going on here is a Hollywood public-relations stunt,” Rothken said. “The reason for the size of the judgment was so a bunch of news organizations would write that ‘a $100 million judgment was issued against a bunch of pirates’ when, in fact, it was declared against a company with no appreciable assets that has already declared bankruptcy.”

An MPAA representative could not be reached for comment.

According to Rothken, TorrentSpy filed bankruptcy in England last week and is without the ability to pay even a fraction of the $100 million, rendering the judgment’s dollar amount meaningless.

In March, when TorrentSpy executives shut down the site, they noted that the cost of defending the case was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

TorrentSpy helps users locate BitTorrent files, and since BiTorrent is a technology favored by those sharing digital files illegally, the site was known as an important tool for pirates. But the company argued that it never hosted any unauthorized content and shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of its users–just as Google isn’t held accountable when people use its service to find pirated content.

The MPAA disagreed, claiming that unlike Google, TorrentSpy existed primarily to help people rip off Hollywood.

In December, TorrentSpy got into trouble with U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, who presided over the case, when she determined that TorrentSpy operators intentionally destroyed evidence, making it impossible for the MPAA to get a fair trial. TorrentSpy had earlier been fined $30,000 for violations of discovery orders.

Cooper took the unusual step of terminating the case, which meant that she had found in the MPAA’s favor and simply had to determine the damage amount.

But Rothken said the case has no precedent-setting value because TorrentSpy never got its day in court. This may come as good news to IsoHunt, one of TorrentSpy’s former competitors, which has also been sued by the MPAA for allegedly violating copyright.

“The decision means absolutely nothing as it relates to other (BitTorrent cases),” Rothken said. “It issue was not decided on the merits. It’s obvious we are going to appeal.”

In the future, utilities will pay you to plug in your vehicle. Millions will plug in their electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) at night when electricity is cheap, then during the day when energy is expensive, sell those extra electrons at a profit. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology is a bi-directional electric grid interface that allows a plug-in to take energy from the grid or put it back on the grid. V2G helps solve the major problem that demand for electricity is high during the day when everything from industrial plants to air conditioning is running full blast and then excess electricity is wasted at night.

Project Better Place plans to deploy a massive network of battery-charging spots. Driving range will no longer be an obstacle, because customers will be able to plug their
cars into charging units in any of the 500,000 charging spots in Israel. An onboard computer system will indicate to the driver the remaining power supply and the nearest charging spot. Nissan, through its joint venture with NEC, has created a battery pack that meets the requirements of the electric vehicle and will produce it in mass volume. The entire framework will go through a series of tests starting this year.

Current consortium members include Accenture, Current Group, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, and Ventyx. Smart Grid City will use real-time, high-speed two-way communication throughout the distribution grid. Smart meters and substations will be integral. Installation will be made of thousands of in-home control devices and the necessary systems to fully automate home energy use.

The Smart Grid Consortium, established in December 2007 by Xcel Energy, will select a community of approximately 100,000 residents to become a Smart Grid City using V2G. Potential benefits include lower utility bills for residents, smarter energy management, better grid reliability, improved energy efficiency, and support for EVs and PHEVs.

In addition to Smart Grid City, another major EV/V2G initiative is unfolding.

Project Better Place has already received more than $200 million of venture capital investment. Shai Agassi presented its new business model at Davos. Agassi was an executive at SAP who led the software company to being the enterprise software leader ahead of Oracle, IBM, and all others. (Read Agassi’s Davos insights here.)

Shai Agassi predicts that Israel will have more than 100,000 electric vehicles in use by 2010. This will be 5 percent of the nation’s vehicle population. The number represents a significant step toward energy independence.

Success with V2G would be a double win for electric utilities. Millions of EVs and PHEVs would expand the sale of electricity as an alternative to oil. Utilities could avoid building more dirty-peaking power plants. Instead they could buy back electricity at peak hours from vehicle drivers. It would be a financial win-win for all.

The current electrical grid is poorly designed for distributed generation of power. Individuals and businesses lose months and connect fees when they add solar and other forms of renewable energy to the grid. Smart Grid City will easily support up to 1,000 easily dispatched distributed generation technologies including PHEVs, distributed batteries, solar, and wind.

The Renault-Nissan Alliance and Project Better Place have signed a memorandum of understanding to create a mass market for electric vehicles in Israel, which is an excellent target market: it has a sales tax exceeding 60 percent for gasoline vehicles, gasoline costs over $6 per gallon, most driving fits the range of electric vehicles, and the government strongly supports energy independence.

The Israeli model is different than the rapid battery swap model that Better Place has promoted as better than “dangerous” fast charging. For the future, Renault is working on developing exchangeable batteries for continuous mobility.

Just as wireless service providers offer smartphones at discounted prices, Project Better Place will offer discounted electric vehicles with usage pricing plans. Prepaid 600 kilometer cards are one approach that is suggested. A free car on a four-year plan in France is another idea mentioned by Shai Agassi, CEO of Project Better Place. Annual use of an EV should be less than the average cost of $8,000 per year for using a gasoline vehicle in many countries including the U.S.

Several early models of passenger vehicles have enough energy stored in advanced batteries to power several homes for hours. Hybrid electric buses and heavy trucks could power many homes or a school or hospital in an emergency. Recent announcements demonstrate that electric utilities and some automakers want to make V2G a reality.

Sprint is the third-largest cell phone company in the U.S. behind AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Investors have been unhappy with Sprint’s performance for sometime, which actually led to the company’s previous CEO, Gary Forsee being forced out in October. Hesse took over as CEO in December.

Sprint Nextel is preparing to cut thousands of jobs, according to the The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal also reported that Sprint might also consolidate its headquarters in Overland Park, Kan., to “streamline decision making.” Right now, Sprint uses Nextel’s old headquarters in Reston, Va., as home base with about 4,500 employees there. The bulk of the company’s employees–about 13,000 –work in Kansas.

The company’s new CEO, Dan Hesse, is supposedly trying to show investors that he is serious about cutting costs, the newspaper’s Web site reported late on Monday. A Sprint representative declined to comment on the story.

Exactly how many people could lose their jobs is not yet known. Last year the company cut about 5,000 jobs. At the end of the last quarter Sprint reported it had roughly 60,000 employees.

But simply getting more executives under one roof won’t solve all of Sprint’s problems. The company also faces big questions about what it will do about the WiMax mobile broadband network it’s building. The new network, which is costing Sprint $5 billion, is expected to launch in its first cities in April. Before Hesse took over as CEO, the company said it was still committed to building the WiMax network. But now new questions have been raised about how committed the company will be.

This could be the first big move the CEO is taking to get the company back on track.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

Unfortunately, Microsoft also had the shame of the Blue Screen of Death afflict the opening ceremonies, with the BSoD up on the big screen for more than two hours during the ceremony. Li Ning, who lit the main Olympic torch, actually walked in front of the BSoD, immortalizing the image of Microsoft XP failing on the Beijing Olympics.

You win some, you lose some. Microsoft is getting its brand on the Beijing Olympics in more ways than one, in one case to very poor effect.

commentary (Credit:
Rivercool)

Reports from China suggest that Microsoft’s Silverlight is delivering exceptional streaming video for NBC’s Olympic coverage.

Yes, XP. The Olympics decided to use XP instead of Vista because it’s more stable. Yes, really.