Apple has doubled the capacity of both its iPhone and iPod Touch allowing new customers to spend $100 more and get twice the storage for music, movies, pictures, and podcasts than available with previous models. Introduced today, the 32GB iPod Touch sells for $499 and the 16GB iPhone goes for $499.
Pricing on existing iPod and iPhone models stays the same. But if you're in the market for a new iPhone or iPod Touch, spending $100 more to double your capacity is a pretty good deal.
Of course the larger capacities may rile some existing iPhone and iPod Touch users as was the case when Apple dropped the price of the iPhone.
Could this be seen as another stab at the early adopters? Of course that was not Apple's intentions, but that is an obvious consequence of an upgrade of this magnitude less than a year after the initial release. But it's okay, early adopters, pull that knife out of your back and listen to what Apple has to say is the reason for the upgrade.
Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPod and iPhone product marketing said in the release, "For some users, there's never enough memory." This is definitely true, especially with music collections shifting completely digital, but Greg, it still stings for those of us picked up a 16GB iPod Touch merely months ago to have a new bigger and better model become available.
It's kind of funny to think about it, but who would have thought the world would get so upset over a product improvement? Isn't that what companies are supposed to be doing?
Feb 5, 2008
Apple Doubles Storage Capacity of iPhone, iPod Touch
The high cost of e-mail autocomplete
I've always been leery of Microsoft Outlook's autocomplete feature. That's the one that guesses who you want to send the e-mail to by looking at the first few letters you type.
It's right most of the time. 
But with e-mail used to send everything from jokes, to family photos to corporate secrets, "most of the time" seems like far too low a bar.
Eli Lilly and its outside lawyers found out this the hard way this week when one of the esquires sent a note intended for a colleague to a New York Times writer with the same last name. (Note: I'm not certain which e-mail program the lawyer was using, and it's supposition, though a seemingly safe bet, that some sort of autocomplete was to blame.)
The result was that confidential negotiations with the government involving as much as $1 billion quickly became nonconfidential. The Times, doing what it does, got a big scoop.
A representative for Pepper Hamilton, the law firm whose barrister sent the note, was not immediately available for comment. But, in good news for the firm, an Eli Lilly representative told Portfolio that the firm is not immediately getting the boot.
Still, that's some pretty big consequences for a feature that saves a few seconds' time. Sure, those seconds add up over time. But I imagine the lawyer in question would give any amount of time to have that e-mail back.
I try to always give my address bar a second look before hitting send, but once or twice have found my note to a colleague going to an outside contact with a similar name. Maybe Microsoft should get rid of the feature.
Then again, in a world where businesses and governments are increasingly secretive, maybe the typo has become the greatest opportunity for openness and democracy. On second thought, leave it in there.
Update: A Microsoft representative said the feature can be turned off. Here's how:
• Under the Tools menu, click Options.
• On the Preferences tab, click E-mail Options, and then click Advanced E-mail Options.
• Select or clear the "Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields" check box.
Another suggestion comes from ClearContext VP Brad Meador, who recommends people tweak Outlook settings to delay sending e-mail for a matter of minutes. That way there's a chance to catch a broad array of mistakes before they go out forever.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1TB Hard
If it isn't already obvious, storage space is getting to be more and more important. High definition content is using much more space than previous forms of media, and the smallish quarter terabyte drives we've been using a mere 2 years ago really won't cut it these days. In a recent review, we've pointed out that a 10 second OTA HD signal consumes about 25MB. That's 9GB gone for just one hour of recording. Despite not watching much "live" TV, I do like to record a lot of television to catch up on later and it's clear that if I want to record in HD, I'll need a lot of space.
Enough of that banter, since if you're here reading this article now, you're already aware of all of this. One terabyte drives are in full force now, and today we'll be looking at the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11. While this series of Barracudas come in a variety of capacities, we're focusing on their 1TB model.
The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
Like all of their consumer drives, the Barracuda 7200.11 is a standard sized 3.5" hard drive, so it should fit just fine in any internal drive bay that follows the usual IDE specifications. Below is a quick cheat sheet comparing the 7200.11 to the 7200.10 which we've looked at in the past:
The biggest change from the 7200.10 to the 7200.11 is the increase in platter size. We mentioned there will be a few capacities offered, but we can sum it up by saying that there will be 3; 500GB, 750GB and 1TB. If you're shopping for the 1TB version, another change from the previous model is the doubling of cache from 16MB to 32MB. The 500GB and 750GB will only ship with 16MB. As the name implies, the Barracuda spins its drives at 7200rpm, allowing for a sustained transfer rate of 105MB per second. Keep in mind that this is a number provided by Seagate, and we have no numbers officially regarding their earlier products.
Going back to the platter size increase we mentioned last paragraph, the easiest way to create bigger hard drives is to increase the areal density. Seagate was able to cram a lot of space into their previous 7200.10 through the use of Perpendicular Recording Technology. Perpendicular recording addresses the shortcomings of longitudinal recording by aligning the bit magnetization in a "standing" position. Seagate has already introduced this technology earlier with the Barracuda 7200.10, their Momentus 5400.3 and their Cheetah 15000.5 Enterprise drives. The Barracuda 7200.11 introduces the second generation of Perpendicular Recording where we now jump to 250GB platters.
To explain Perpendicular Recording, you can think of it this way. Magnetic recording is a lot like sewing. Think of the magnetic field from a write head as a needle, and the recording layer of a disc as the cloth you are trying to sew. The fabric is the magnetic strength of the disc and the needle is the strength of the write head (the write field) Your data is the seam in the fabric. The more stitches per inch, the more data you store. To make your data durable, you want to use a thick fabric, and a long needle, but this gets in the way of making many stitches to the inch.
In longitudinal recording, the magnetic layer (the cloth) is laid directly onto the aluminum substrate. When data is written, it is like sewing with the cloth laid flat on a table. Going flat along the table, the needle can only make stitches far apart. If you use a shorter needle, and thinner cloth, the stitches get closer together, but the seam gets weaker and weaker. When the material gets too thin, the seam tears, and the data is lost.
In perpendicular recording, a soft underlayer is put down between the substrate and the recording layer. The soft underlayer lifts the cloth off the table, letting the needle go into the cloth straight up and down. Now you can put stitches very close together, and still use a long needle, and thick cloth. Your data seam has more stitches, and it is stronger as well.
As the larger platters increase areal density, it allows Seagate to build large capacity drives with fewer platters. Few platters mean less power consumed (about 1W at idle and load according to Seagate's specs comparing the 7200.11 to the 7200.10) as well as increased performance given that the data is more tightly packed. With Seagate's SoftSonic motor and fewer platters (when compared against competitor's equivalent capacity drives), the Barracuda should be quieter as well.
The Barracuda 7200.11 is a native SATA product and supports speeds of SATA 3.0Gb/s. Unlike some of the first batches of SATA drives, a native drive will bypass the legacy Task File reads and writes, as well as avoiding the limitation of 133 Mbytes/sec for Ultra DMA Mode 6 transfers. While the 7200.11 supports SATA 3Gb/s transfer speeds, it is backwards compatible with SATA 1.5GB/s hosts. SATAII mode is also supported by the drive and it is enabled by default. Provided your motherboard supports it, it would be a good idea to leave it this way, but be sure to flip the jumper position if not. One of our forum readers in the past had an issue with a MSI P4N Diamond (no SATAII support) and a Seagate drive and changing the jumper corrected his problem of the drive not being detected.
As with all Barracudas starting with the 7200.7 series, the Barracuda 7200.11 fully supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Introduced with the Serial ATA II spec, this is a feature that can only be found in native SATA hard drives. Unlike LCQ, NCQ works by allowing a drive to process multiple commands at the same time. These commands can be rescheduled or reordered on a whim, and can also issue new requests while the drive is retrieving data from the previous request. While NCQ support is present on the drive, the controller used will also need to support NCQ in order to take advantage of it. As with the previous NCQ enabled Barracudas, the drive will work fine without an NCQ controller.
Intel's Silverthorne, Tukwila Updates and More
Silverthorne Shapes Up
At the International Solid State Circuits Conference held at San Francisco, Intel presented 14 new technical papers that revolved around ultra mobile wireless computing, wireless radio technology standards and Tera-scale computing project. In this article, we'll be summarizing the most significant updates presented.
First up, Intel revealed more information on its processor technologies. Designed for ultra mobile computing, Intel spent a good deal of time relating how Silverthorne processors on the "Menlow" Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform are going to usher in a whole new segment of devices. Silverthorne is a low-powered Intel-Architecture (IA) processor that's derived from the Core 2 Duo desktop processor, thus conforming to the full C2D Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), but it consumes far lower power than even the ultra-low-voltage (ULV) Core Solo/Duo processor. Based on the same 45m high-K metal-gate CMOS transistor design as was the desktop Penryn processors, this 47-million transistor chip is designed for sub-1W to 2W operation - something that even the lowest powered ULV Core Solo processor cannot attain as it has trouble hitting the 5W barrier. To further conserve power, the processor uses a split I/O power supply to allow certain sections of the chip to shut down when not required. Other power management techniques incorporated is a Deep Power Down (C6) state, clock gating and power optimized register file to further curb dynamic and leakage power.
The Silverthorne is a dual-issue in-order 16-stage pipeline architecture with Hyper-threading (HT) support. Note that all current mainstream Intel processors are using out-of-order architectures, but on a processor of its scale/use and its limited resources, Intel opted for a more streamlined approach with lower analysis overhead. In case you're wondering why Hyper-threading is again making a comeback, the Silverthorne is a single-core processor and the best way to utilize its already limited resources effectively is via SMT type of Hyper-threading. Another reason HT was incorporated was because it required very little more silicon/logic to greatly increase efficiency. When HT first came to the consumer level several years ago, we've already seen its benefits of resource optimization through parallelism. This worked marvelously on single-core processors but has lost its advantage in the current multi-core processor era. As such, the Silverthorne is a single-core processor with dual-thread handling capability.
As for the status of the Silverthorne processors, Intel is already sampling them for production and their schedules are on track for introduction in the first half of this year. While Intel can't yet comment on the exact specifics of the chip details, performance at the moment is estimated to be around the same class as that of the first generation Pentium M processor (Banias core). This is based on Silverthorne's single-thread operation and it should fare slightly better with HT. Considering that Silverthorne processors are destined for ultra mobile computing devices such as UMPC-type devices and perhaps even Smartphones, that sounds like a lot of juice for very decent power draw. One of its most formidable opponents is none other than Samsung's ARM processor series, but we'll reserve true judgment when appropriate gadgets are made available utilizing the Silverthorne processor. Currently, the Intel A100 and A110 ultra mobile processors are using the Stealey core that's derived off the original Pentium M core. Silverthorne and its Menlow platform will replace them once they debut.
Feb 4, 2008
Vista SP1 is Complete, Update Available in March
Windows Vista Service Pack One is ready to ship, Microsoft says. PC manufacturers and consumers can expect the update in March. Microsoft has said that SP1 includes Vista OS improvements including reliability, security and performance. For a first look at those improvements read PC World's review of beta SP1.
Unlike some of the reports and speculation from last week, Vista SP1 is not officially available today. Microsoft said that it will be available to new volume licensing customers beginning March 1. Existing Vista consumers will have to wait until mid-March, Microsoft says, when the download becomes available through Microsoft's Windows Update Web site. Windows Vista users who have their systems configured to receive automatic updates will get SP1 automatically delivered in mid-April, Microsoft says.
One small catch is that Microsoft will not offer the update to a small subset of Vista PCs that have been found to have "problematic" device drivers. Those drivers, Microsoft says, were not installed properly initially and when Vista SP1 is installed OS problems ensue. For those systems, "if Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1," according to the Windows Vista Team Blog.
No word on how many systems are impacted by this driver flaw. Microsoft says the fix for those systems is to reinstall the driver in question, however does not indicate what software program(s) create the driver problem.
Also over at the team blog, Mike Nash of the Windows Product Management group gets further into everything SP1 is looking to fix, including software compatibility and security. Many of the updates were made as requested by the consumers with the Customer Experience Improvement Program, Online Crash Analysis, and Windows Error Reporting.
Microsoft's Yahoo Bid is Really About Biz Apps
At first blush, Microsoft 's proposed acquisition of Yahoo for $46.6 billion is about growing its consumer advertising and portal business to better compete wit Google. And that's certainly part of the mix, but perhaps lost in the discussion is how such an acquisition could help Microsoft execute its software-plus-services strategy for delivering business apps over the Internet faster and better, said several analysts. That strategy could help Microsoft compete with Google's own business-apps initiative, they said.
"Yahoo has very efficient datacenters, as does Microsoft," noted Rob Koplowitz, a Forrester Research analyst. By combining their datacenters -- and, more important, their engineering talent -- Microsoft should be able to move faster and more efficiently on delivering business apps over the Internet, something that Microsoft has done at a fairly slow pace so far. "Yahoo's engineers can help," he noted, "And you know that there'll be engineers who are freed up" after the acquisition, should it go through.
Google Apps Threat
"Although Google Applications have yet to make a real dent in the Microsoft Office giant, they do pose a long-term threat," said David Mitchell, a senior IT researcher at the consultancy Ovum. "As a defense against this position, Microsoft needs to accelerate its own move into online services. The online engineering capabilities that Yahoo has will undoubtedly offer Microsoft the potential to bring new services to market" and will help Microsoft stay competitive.
Koplowitz said he does not believe Microsoft is trying to buy specific technology from Yahoo to fill a hole needed to compete against Google's business offerings. Microsoft wants more talent and capacity to follow its existing strategy, he said. Google's approach is to offer pure Web-based apps, which he noted are more mature than Microsoft's Web-delivered apps. Microsoft's approach is to extend its 450 million Office desktop seats through additional software delivered via the Internet. The strategies have some overlap, but because they are different, Koplowitz expects Microsoft and Google to take different technology paths rather than try to copy each other.
Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo would also bolster the company in another area where it has fallen behind Google: search, said Charlene Yi, a Forrester analyst. "Microsoft is interested in search because it provides a beachhead into businesses -- especially small and medium-sized ones that don't have a direct relationship with Microsoft," she said, as businesses typically buy Office software from retailers and resellers. Google is using search to forge those direct relationships and then offer business apps that compete with Microsoft's plans.
Sony VAIO NR160E/T
Sony’s NR notebooks are designed to be affordable, fashionable, and decent all-around PCs that aren’t bottom of the barrel nor top-of-the-line. Think “midrange notebook” with a fancy shell. They are available in three different colors, have a unique textured surface, and are middle-of-the-road in terms of specs and performance. Though we like the aesthetic the NR’s a bit sluggish and has a ton of bloatware (pre-loaded software that eats up precious resources). Though it would be semi-easy to remedy these two negatives, out of the box the NR is a smidge disappointing.
“...this is a notebook for the family, not enthusiasts or business travelers..”
Processor Brand Intel
Processor Class Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed 1.5 GHz
Mobile Technology Intel Centrino Duo
Installed Memory 1 GB
Maximum Memory 2 GB
Memory Technology DDR II SDRAM
Cache Size 2 MB
Storage Hard Drive Capacity 160 GB
Included Drives DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM
CD Write Speed 24 X
CD Rewrite Speed 24 X
CD Read Speed 24 X
DVD Read Speed 8 X
DVD Write Speed 8x (DVD±R), 4x (DVD±R DL)
Display and Graphics Display Size 15.4 in
Display Type TFT active matrix
Graphics Processor Intel GMA X3100
Resolution 1280 x 800 pixels
Battery Battery Life 4.5 hour(s)
Battery Type Lithium ion
Communications and Networking Modem Speed 56 Kbps
Network Support Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11g
Software Operating System Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Connectors Interface Provided S-Video, VGA, Phone line, Ethernet
Warranty Warranty Information 1 year warranty
Base Warranty 1 year warranty
General Product Info Input Devices Keyboard, Touchpad
Included Sound Card Sound card
Chassis Color Wenge brown
Weight 6.2 lbs
Feb 2, 2008
Microsoft bids $44.6 billion for Yahoo
update Microsoft went public Friday with a $44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid to acquire Yahoo.
In its response, Yahoo called the Microsoft bid "unsolicited" but did not reject it.
Microsoft's offer, which was contained in the letter to Yahoo's board, amounts to $31 a share and represents a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's closing price on Thursday. Microsoft said it will offer shareholders the option of cash or stock.
"We have great respect for Yahoo, and together, we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers, and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online-services market," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement.
Yahoo said in a responding statement that its board "will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly, in the context of Yahoo's strategic plans, and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders."
The deal comes as Microsoft and Yahoo have both struggled to compete against Google.
Microsoft didn't mention Google by name in its announcement, but it did indicate that its acquisition bid was aimed squarely at its rival.
"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player, who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition," Microsoft said. "Together, Microsoft and Yahoo can offer a credible alternative."
In a conference call Friday morning, Ballmer said that Microsoft and Yahoo "really do share a vision for the potential of online services."
Microsoft said in its statement that it believes that it can get all of the needed regulatory approvals and that the deal, if ultimately approved by Yahoo shareholders, could be completed in the second half of the year.
Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research, said it's "clear that there is increased pressure on Microsoft from Google, and they recognize that. Way back when, Yahoo wasn't that interested in a Microsoft deal. What a difference two years make. Microsoft has a pile of money, and Yahoo has experienced problems of its own. Ballmer, in the past, has historically not loved these types of deals. It is indicative of how different the world is now.
Gartenberg added that the deal "absolutely" makes sense. "But there is a lot to be done in the details. Getting this deal done might be the easiest part. The real challenge is what happens when they finish the deal. This is not a panacea--the details will be what matters," he said.
Rumors that Microsoft was interested in Yahoo have bubbled up from time to time, including the past two springs, on the eve of Microsoft advertising conferences.
The move would be by far the largest acquisition ever for Microsoft. Its largest prior deal, also in the online-advertising space, was last year's $6 billion deal to acquire Aquantive.
Asked on the conference call why Microsoft still needs Yahoo after buying Aquantive, Ballmer pointed to Yahoo's reach with consumers.
"Certainly from a consumer perspective, there's no better way to increase scale and capacity than this acquisition," Ballmer said.
Microsoft also pointed to the intense investments needed in data centers and technology needed to compete with Google.
"Scale matters," said Kevin Johnson, president of the Microsoft division that houses Windows and online advertising. "Some of the scale economics can kick in rather rapidly."
Ultimately, Ballmer said, the deal should help Microsoft become profitable in online advertising.
"We've been losing money," Ballmer said. "Our plan would be to not lose money in the future."
In a letter sent to Yahoo's board late Thursday, Microsoft confirmed that it has had talks with Yahoo since 2006 but that its suggestions of an acquisition had been rebuffed.
"In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together," Microsoft said. "These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected."
The letter goes on to say that an offer in February 2007 was also rejected. Although at one time, Microsoft was open to other kinds of partnerships with Yahoo, the company says now it just wants to own Yahoo outright.
"While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo that we are proposing," Microsoft said in the letter.
In the conference call, Ballmer said that when Microsoft first talked to Yahoo more than a year ago, it believed that a merger would have benefits to both companies.
"We believe now in those benefits more than ever," Ballmer said.
The public offer follows Yahoo's disappointing earnings report on Tuesday, which sent the company's shares down. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said Tuesday that the company is facing "headwinds." He also announced 1,000 layoffs.
Terry Semel, Yahoo's former CEO, who left that position last summer but remained as nonexecutive chairman of the board, left the company altogether on Thursday.
Microsoft's move validates Yahoo's value and could bring out other prospective buyers, said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land. However, Microsoft doesn't have enough of a plan as to how it would integrate Yahoo into the company, he said.
Unlike with Microsoft's Aquantive and Tellme acquisitions, Microsoft and its Live brands have a lot of overlap with Yahoo, including e-mail, portal, advertising, and search.
"Microsoft suffers in that they are conflicted over two different brands, and now they're going to have to be conflicted over three," Sullivan said. "If Microsoft wants to be a leader in search, this is a way for them to climb up and be No. 2 against Google. And it validates that Yahoo isn't a loser. It's a company that's worth a lot of money."
A merger might give Google some extra competition, but it wouldn't unseat it as the top search provider, and it would take some time to convince advertisers that they would do better on a Microsoft-Yahoo platform over Google's highly successful ad business, said Mark Mahaney of Citigroup.
"If Yahoo wants to remain independent, it will need to show investors that it is willing to take radical, value-creating steps," and outsourcing search to Google is one of its few options, Mahaney wrote in a research note.
Imran Khan of J.P. Morgan Securities thinks that regulators will approve the deal.
"Yahoo is better off inside a larger company with (a) strong balance sheet and technology," Khan wrote in a research note. A merger of Microsoft and Yahoo could give them the scale, in terms of search traffic, that they need to compete against Google and provide a boost on the ad side, he added.
"A combination of Yahoo's relationships (with DSL providers), and Microsoft's applications and devices, could create a very well positioned potential competitor," Khan wrote.
Microsoft's financial advisers are Morgan Stanley and The Blackstone Group.
CNET News.com's Mike Ricciuti contributed to this report.
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz - Wolfdale Arrives
ntel's 45nm Dual-Cores have finally arrived, so it's only fitting that we take one for a spin. Our test subject is the 3.0GHz E8400, offering 6MB cache, SSE4 and more. Overclocking is impressive, with 3.8GHz stable being possible without even raising the voltage! This chip definitely proves itself a winner.
In the summer of 2006, Intel released their 65nm Conroe-based processors, and to say they won the hearts of many would be an understatement. It was one product-launch that Intel didn't want to hit lightly, especially since AMD were actively taking from their customer base - on the enthusiast side, most notably. When said and done, Intel did accomplish what they planned to do. They put the industry through a blender and showed us how to be excited about processors again.
Although frequencies with Conroe were not as high as what we were used to seeing from Intel, the folks in Santa Clara proved that a high frequency didn't mean much if the processor itself was inefficient. Indeed, a 2.4GHz Conroe Dual-Core proved just how much better an efficient processor could be, and it quickly became the most common processor choice for the enthusiast.
The following summer, follow-up processors were released, including the E6750 Dual-Core which we evaluated at the time. Besides speed bumps, those processors didn't bring much to the table in way of new features, except for native 1333FSB support. Instead, the processor we are taking a look at today is one of the few new models that effectively replace the Conroe-based chips that we came to love so dearly in summer of '06.
I won't delve deep into how 45nm improves on 65nm, as I explained all of that in our QX9650 review, but I will touch on things briefly. One large benefit that comes with all die shrinks is better power efficiency and lower temperatures. Chips have the capability to run just as fast, if not faster, than their predecessors, all while running cooler and drawing less power. It's a win/win situation.
But with 45nm, Intel introduced more than just a die shrink. The biggest feature that most people will be interested in is the SSE4 instruction set. It affects media-buffs only - those who encode videos - but the performance gains are so evident, that developers of such applications are bound to begin supporting it sooner than later. The speed increases could be as large as 2x, even though it's difficult to believe.
Other improvements include increased L2 cache, half-multipliers (eg, 9.5x), a faster front-side-bus, improved Super Shuffle Engine, Smart Cache (to improve how split loads are accessed and stored) and so many transistors on a single die, it can give people headaches to think about it!
No More Netscape !!!
BBC news are reporting that the once famous Netscape Navigator web browser is to be retired. AOL (who own netscape) plan to end support for the product on 1st Feb 2008.
"Netscape was developed by Marc Andreessen, co-author of Mosaic, the first popular web browser. Mosaic was written while Mr Andreessen was a student at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in 1992. After graduation he set up Netscape Communications Corporation and began development of the Navigator browser. The first version was released in 1994. It was quickly a success and dominated the browser market in the mid-1990s."
If Microsoft Buys Yahoo: What We'd Love--and Hate
Put together two giants like these and there are bound to be some good results and some nasty ones. Here are 11 of our dreams and nightmares.
It's the year 2010. Microsoft owns Yahoo and has just changed the name of Flickr to Microsoft Flickr Live Photo-Sharing Service for Digital Camera Enthusiasts. The service is still free, but Windows Vista users will have to validate their copy of Vista as "genuine" first to use it. What has Microsoft wrought?
That's just one of the nightmares we can foresee from a Microsoft-Yahoo merger. But some good things could ensue for computer users too. Here's what we'd love - and hate - to see happen.
Love: Sending a Wake-Up Call to Google
Google has been untouchable in many aspects when it comes to search, Web innovations, and free cool services such as Google Maps. But perhaps Google has grown too complacent. While we are waiting to see what becomes of Google's mobile strategy, we're less enthralled by services such as Knol. We want to see the combined force of Microsoft and Yahoo give Google an honest run for its money when it comes to innovative online services.
Hate: Goodbye, Beloved Services
The shuttering of Yahoo or MSN services is something we'd hate to see (actually, we wouldn't shed any tears over Windows Live), but it's inevitable some will get the axe, given the overlapping services owned by Microsoft and Yahoo. The merged company would simply create too many redundant services and the odds are some of our beloved services would be killed. Branded services such as Yahoo Mail and Hotmail would survive, but there is a good chance they'd share one development team. Over time the services would become virtually identical, sharing features, functions, bugs, and limitations. Microsoft's instant messaging system sneezes, for example, and Yahoo Messenger catches a cold.
Love: Yahoo Boosts Microsoft Live
We think both behemoths could learn a lot from the other especially when it comes to the look, feel, and usability of Web pages and services. We'd like to see Windows Live integrated into simpler interfaces. Right now there is Windows Live and Microsoft Office Live Small Business. Both are not tied to directly either to the Windows OS or Microsoft Office. Both Microsoft Live sites seem so disconnected.
Yahoo was best in the early days at keeping the interface simple on services such as Yahoo Travel. Today's Yahoo can't match the minimalism of many Google offerings, but it still has designs that are simpler and easier to use than many counterparts at Microsoft.
Hate: Microsoft Yahoo Chaos
Combining the two giants will create confusion. Could you use your MSN Messenger ID to login to Yahoo Mail? Will your Passport be accepted at Yahoo's border?
