IT NEWS

Adobe, Google, Yahoo enabling flash searches 
 
The project would allow flash pages to be returned in a search, meaning millions of rich Internet applications will become searchable. In a move that could add substantial volumes of Flash content to Internet search results, Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo to provide optimized Flash Player technology to enhance the searching of this content.

The project will enable searches on Flash content to return text and links, which can then be indexed, said Justin Everett-Church, Adobe senior product manager for the Flash Player. Content from a Flash application or even a game or advertisement will be available to search engines. Pages containing a Flash .SWF file will be returned in a search.

"The Flash Player is going to be used by Google and Yahoo on their servers to run Flash content at runtime," Everett-Church said. "This means much better search results for end-users. [Until now], it has been a challenge to search Flash content on the Web."

Google will begin offering Flash search capabilities, while Yahoo plans to do so in a future update to Yahoo Search. With Google's rollout, millions of rich Internet applications and dynamic Web experiences utilizing Flash will become searchable without the need for companies and developers to alter the content.
Adobe's move was described as a positive one by an analyst in the search engine space, who nonetheless said she would take a wait-and-see approach to gauge the exact benefits.

"Historically, search engines haven't been able to crawl Flash content at all," said Vanessa Fox, an editor at Search Engine Land, an online journal covering the search industry. "I'm sort of reserving my judgment a little," she said. It is good that search engines are working with Adobe to surface Flash-based information, but the impact remains to be seen, Fox said. She added she has not been able to get examples of how many more pages can be indexed via the project.

"It could be a large impact or it also could be really small," said Fox. There are ecommerce sites based on Flash technology that now could make their content more visible, according to Fox. "The idea of this is that search engines will now be able to extract the text and the link," but information maintained only in videos will still be invisible, she said. Video search capabilities could be added at some point, Everett-Church said.

"I do think developers who are implementing Flash on their site probably still need to pay attention to search engine optimization," Fox said. Adobe's effort probably will not fix all the current issues, she said.
Google and Yahoo, in prepared statements, both espoused purported benefits of the endeavor.

"Google has been working hard to improve how we can read and discover SWF files," said Bill Coughran, Google senior vice president of engineering. "Through our recent collaboration with Adobe, we now can help web site owners that choose to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing content better." "Yahoo is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation," said Sean Suchter, vice president of Yahoo Search technology engineering.

While Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo initially, plans call for eventually making the new search capability available to benefit all content publishers, developers, and end-users, the company said.

Source: Infoworld



OOXML projects bolster Microsoft's interoperability efforts 

As part of its ongoing interoperability efforts, Microsoft is unveiling projects designed to improve data portability between Office 2007 and other file formats Microsoft recentlyunveiled projects to improve data portability between Office 2007 and other document file formats, including the design of a new translator for exchanging OOXML (Office Open XML) and HTML documents.

The company also posted the 1.0 version of technical documentation for protocols in Office and other software that enable those applications to interact with third-party programs. The moves are part of a companywide commitment, to foster interoperability, an initiative launched under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union and competition from Linux and open-source software.

Microsoft also outlined some efforts it's been making to work in the community to help third parties develop interoperable technologies and promote data portability between its products and others, notably between its controversial OOXML file format and other formats for exchanging documents. For example, the company is working on a new translator to read from documents in the Open XML file format to HTML. The company has posted information about the project on its Codeplex site.

OOXML is the XML-based document format in Office 2007. The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) recently approved it as an international standard in a vote that is still being contested by some countries that took part in the decision.

Microsoft has said it will support a rival file format and ISO standard, ODF (OpenDocument Format), in Office 2007 in a service pack to be released early next year. It has slated support for OOXML in Office for the next version of Office, code-named Office 14, but no official release date has been set for that product. Many expect it will be released next year as well, however.

As part of its efforts to post information about connection protocols for its software, Microsoft also posted online Version 1.0 of technology documentation for protocols built into Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Nearly 5,000 pages of new technical documentation for the Office binary file formats .doc, .xls, .xlsb and .ppt for Word, Excel and PowerPoint also went up online.

Microsoft has limped toward a more open development and data-exchange policy for some time. However, repeated fines from the EU for not complying with an antitrust settlement and increased competitive pressure from open-source software and Linux pressured the company to launch February's formal interoperability and expansive technical-documentation effort.

Source: Infoworld

 

A cringing quarter for venture capitalists [By: MATT RICHTEL]

As I reported recently, venture capitalists experienced a very poor second quarter. The industry’s trade association said that for the first time since 1978, not a single venture-backed company went public in the quarter. From the perspective of the venture capital industry, it turns out that the news was worse than I reported.

The other bad news was the industry’s disclosure early morning that acquisitions of venture-backed companies are down sharply, too. In the second quarter, 50 mergers or acquisitions of venture-backed companies were completed. That’s down from 70 in the first quarter. In the first half of 2008, there were 120 such deals altogether, down 28 percent from the 169 in the first half of 2007.

If you’re a venture capitalist, or a limited partner investing in venture funds, this is the part of the article where your teeth start to hurt and your temples throb. That’s because venture capitalists have looked upon the opportunity to sell their companies through acquisitions as an alternative, albeit a less lucrative one, to going public. And now the M&A track has slowed, too.

The National Venture Capital Association, the industry’s trade group, largely blamed a weak economy for the trouble its members are having finding profitable exits. But it said the government was to blame too, particularly for the dearth of initial public offerings. Were it not for excessive regulation in the form of Sarbanes-Oxley, it would cost less for companies to go public and there would be more offerings, the industry group said.

It said that in 2007, the median age of a venture-backed company from founding date to public offering hit a 27-year high of 8.6 years.

In a news release, Mark Heesen, president of the N.V.C.A., said the problem needed to be addressed by policy makers or the results could be serious for the economy and innovation. “Venture-backed companies that successfully enter the public markets represent a critical job creation engine for the United States economy, and that engine has completely shut down,” Mr. Heesen said. “We need to put regulators, legislators, presidential candidates, and the private sector on notice that this situation represents a serious problem that will have long reaching economic implications if not addressed. We view this quarter as the ‘the canary in the coal mine.’”

Some venture capitalists blame the industry itself, arguing seed investors haven’t been investing in the right kinds of start-ups if they hope to get the attention of Wall Street. Too many Web 2.0 companies, these critics say, were given money and not enough big growth, scalable, mass-market companies.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, the timing of the rough quarter is inopportune for the industry, and not just because venture capitalists require public offerings or acquisitions in order to profit and get new investors filling their coffers. Mr. Heesen and the industry overall has been intensifying its lobbying efforts in Washington, trying to wield influence on such matters as tax and alternative energy policy.

But if the venture capitalists aren’t thriving and getting exits, it could begin to undermine the argument they make on Capitol Hill that they deserve a seat at the policy table because they are essential to job creation. In that respect, the difficult second quarter could be part of a vicious cycle for venture capitalists: they have trouble finding exits, they make less money and then lose some of the clout they need among policy makers whom they need to spur public offerings anew.

Source: New York Times, Technology


 

TRENDS

Open Source CRM delivers more control, less cost

IT leaders who can get past the idea that open-source CRM software doesn't cost enough say they like the power and flexibility of owning their own code.

A good CRM package does you no good if employees aren't willing to use it. Case in point: IMA Financial Group, a medium-sized financial services company based in Wichita, Kansas. IMA had installed a commercial customer relationship management system that "was flexible and configurable and attractive on the front end," says business processes manager Jennifer Hallam. But the seeming advantage of a vastly configurable system was irritating her internal customers—and so only 10 to 15 percent of them were using it.

"The old system simply had too many bells and whistles," she says. Even bringing in a developer to simplify the interface didn't do the trick, she adds. After a good deal of internal discussion, the 500-employee company moved users off the old system late last year (IMA has asked not to disclose the vendor's name) and installed ConcourseSuite 5.0, an open source CRM solution from Concursive (formerly Centric CRM). An open source application in an $80 million company? "It was a hurdle to get the management team to accept open source; they didn't understand the business model," says Hallam. But accept it they did, and the package has been adopted by 90 percent of the company's users.

The Right fit for you?
The success of open source operating systems and middleware is an old story: Linux and tools such as Apache have long since moved from the fringes to mainstream adoption. But now, open source enterprise applications, including CRM, are beginning to show up on IT's radar screen, says Gartner analyst Laurie Wurster. According to a recent open source survey by CIO, 45 percent of the 328 IT leaders queried use desktop applications such as OpenOffice.org and 29 percent use open-source enterprise applications. The most popular of those enterprise applications are collaboration tools, CRM tools and ERP applications, according to the survey.

To be sure, this is a nascent trend. Open source CRM barely registers when industry watchers like Gartner compile market share charts. "We have to look at open source CRM the way we looked at Linux five years ago," says Wurster.

And like the early adopters of Linux, the pioneers of open source enterprise applications aren't yet a representative cross section of business. They tend to be companies that are medium-sized, often engaged in business-to-business commerce, and equipped with good in-house development skills.

Enterprise adoption is not unknown; H&R Block, for example, is a Sugar CRM customer. But that's something of an exception to the rule, in part because most big businesses already have a sizable commitment to an existing commercial CRM package. Also, transaction-heavy, consumer-oriented businesses and other large enterprises may need more features than those offered by the open source competition.

Source: CIO
 

10 tools to make Microsoft Windows shine

Add a layer of protection against spyware, stop Kaspersky's annoying audio alerts, and hide your files and folders. Plus: More fixes for the pesky Insert key. Are you worried about malware and spyware plaguing your system? I have a cool, free tool that gives you an extra layer of defense when you're Web surfing. I also have two free utilities that can lock up and hide your sensitive folders and keep them from prying eyes. Plus, for readers who didn't like my earlier tip for disabling the insert key, I offer a nifty program to watch your Insert, Caps Lock, and Num Lock keys.

The Hassle: I have files--documents and videos--on both my desktop PC and my notebook that I'd like to keep private. Do you know of a sure way to do it?

The Fix: If you just want to tuck away one or a few folders, use Free Hide Folder. This menu-driven and password-protected tool creates obscurely named, hidden folders to hold your private data. But it isn't secure: Directory Opus, an ordinary file manager, displayed the hidden folder when I tried it. And if someone on your machine searches for a file name in the folder (or even part of the file name, such as *.jpg), they can find the files and their locations. If you want to keep your folders hidden and secured, use TrueCrypt. A free, powerful tool, it creates an encrypted volume that you use as you would any other drive--but only you can access the files. To avoid losing your data, it's essential that you read the tutorial.
More insert-key madness.

The Hassle: Bad news, Bass. I strongly disagree with your tip to disable the Insert key [see "More Quick Fixes for Common Windows Annoyances" for details]. I use Insert often when filling in text over a form in Word, to prevent the rest of the line from moving to the right. My gripe is with Windows: It doesn't indicate whether I'm in insert or overwrite mode. So how about a tweak to show when the Insert key is enabled?

The Fix: Download DK:Keyboard, and you'll see the status of the Insert, Caps Lock, and Num Lock keys in a system-tray balloon pop-up. Unzip the file and drag the executable to the Startup group. If you'd rather keep tabs on your Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock keys, use Vasilios's NumCapsScroll Indicator. Both tools are free.

Disable Kaspersky's squealing alert

The Hassle: I use Kaspersky Lab's antivirus program. I hate the squealing-pig noise it makes whenever it finds a virus, but it gives no way to change the sound.

The Fix: That oinking sound is both weird and annoying. You can change it by going to Settings, Appearance, Advanced and clearing each item in the Sound column. A better idea is to change the sound file to something more appealing. (My alert simply says, "Uh oh!" You're welcome to use it. Download it here.) From Settings, Service, clear Enable self defense, click Apply, and close Kaspersky. Next head for C:Program FilesKaspersky LabKaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0Skinsounds, delete the Infected.wav file that exists there, and copy your newly downloaded file into its place. Reload Kaspersky and put a check mark on Enable self defense

Ramp up against spyware

The Hassle: I use antivirus and antispyware software, but I still worry about getting nailed by malware. Give me more protection ideas!

The Fix: Even paranoids have enemies, right? Seriously, I agree that fortifying your PC is a good idea. I get an extra edge with Javacool's SpywareBlaster, a freebie that blocks nasty ActiveX controls and stops them from installing on my system. To test SpywareBlaster's skills, I uninstalled it and scrolled to a couple of unsavory sites. CounterSpy, my antispyware app, detected and stopped five Web-based, ActiveX malware attacks. I then reinstalled SpywareBlaster, and it invisibly blocked those same five Web assaults. Very cool!

If you're still worried, use the Try & Decide feature in Acronis TrueImage 11 while browsing. It acts as a virtual machine, writing disk changes to a hidden recovery partition. If anything goes awry, you can restore a pristine prebrowsing version of Windows from the recovery partition. It's slow and it requires a reboot, but it can save your system from disaster. On top of that, TrueImage is a terrific backup program. Read our TrueImage review and download a free trial. For more security tips, read "15 Great, Free Security Programs," and check out our most popular security downloads in "Safe Web Surfing Utilities."
Two tools of the month: imgburn and paint.net

I'll admit to using Nero, the behemoth disc-burning tool that just seems to grow with each release. At the other end of the functionality spectrum is ImgBurn, a lean but still-powerful tool that, well, burns discs--CDs, DVDs, and, if your optical drive supports it, Blu-ray, too. It runs on every Windows platform, as well as Linux. One bloated app I do avoid is Photoshop; its complexity scares me. That's why I love Paint.Net, a free photo and imaging tool that is packed with features--multiple-image support, layering, unlimited undo, and plenty of filters--but isn't so overwhelming that you won't use what it has to offer.

Source: Infoworld



 

STUDIES

More of the world's population connecting to the internet in new ways and embracing Web 2.0 activities, IDC study

Nearly a quarter of the world's population roughly 1.4 billion people will use the Internet on a regular basis in 2008. This number is expected to surpass 1.9 billion unique users, or 30% of the world's population, in 2012, according to IDC's digital marketplace model and forecast.

"The Internet will have added its second billion users over a span of about eight years, a testament to both its universal appeal and its availability," said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC. "In this time, the Internet has also become more deeply integrated into the fabric of many users' personal and professional lives, enabling them to work, play, and socialize anytime from anywhere. These trends will accelerate as the number of mobile users continues to soar and the Internet becomes truly ubiquitous."

While the PC is currently the dominant means of gaining access to the Internet, IDC expects the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet will surpass the number of online PCs by 2012. Once on the Internet, users will continue to spend time on Web 1.0 activities like searching, shopping, and sending email. But Web 2.0 activities, such as watching user-generated videos, posting blogs, and participating in social networks, are quickly capturing the attention and time online of more and more Internet users. The latter will create new opportunities and challenges for online advertisers seeking to monetize the Internet experience.

Highlights from IDC's Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast include the following:

• Users will access the Internet through more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide in 2008, including PCs, mobile phones, and online videogame consoles. By 2012, the number of devices accessing the Internet will double to more than 3 billion, half of which will be mobile devices.

• China passed the United States in 2007 to become the country with the largest number of Internet users. China's online population is forecast to grow from 275 million users in 2008 to 375 million users in 2012.

• Nearly half of all Internet users will make online purchases in 2008. By 2012, there will be more than 1 billion online buyers worldwide making business to consumer (B2C) transactions worth $1.2 trillion. Business to business (B2B) eCommerce will be ten times larger, totalling $12.4 trillion worldwide in 2012.

• Worldwide spending on Internet advertising will total $65.2 billion in 2008, which is nearly 10% of all ad spending across all media. This share is expected to reach 13.6% by 2011 as Internet ad spending grows to $106.6 billion worldwide.

• Roughly 40% of all internet users worldwide currently have mobile internet access. The number of mobile Internet users will reach 546 million in 2008, nearly twice as many as in 2006, and is forecast to surpass 1.5 billion worldwide in 2012.

• The most popular online activities today are searching the Web, finding information for personal use, using Internet email, accessing news and sports information, and accessing financial or credit information. In addition to these activities, more than 50% of online users worldwide are using instant messaging and playing online games. The fastest growing online activities include accessing business applications, creating blogs, online gambling, accessing work-related email, and participating in online communities.

• Among mobile Internet users, the most popular online activities are searching the Web, accessing news and sports information, downloading music, videos, and ringtones, using instant messaging, and using Internet email. By 2012, downloading music, videos, and ringtones will become the number one activity among mobile Internet users worldwide.

Source: IDC




Worldwide spending on internet advertising will soar past $106 billion in 2011

Worldwide spending on Internet advertising will total $65.2 billion in 2008, which represents nearly 10% of all ad spending across all media. With IDC's Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast projecting 15-20% annual growth throughout the forecast period, this share will reach 13.6% by 2011 as Internet ad spending grows to $106.6 billion worldwide.
"Compared to more mature types of advertising, Internet advertising is growing at a phenomenal rate," said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC. "But Internet advertising is still relatively new and growing from a much smaller base. By the end of the forecast period, spending for Internet advertising will trail direct mail – the third largest form of advertising – by more than $30 billion, while spending on TV and print ads will each be nearly twice as great as for online ads. The long-term opportunity for Internet advertising can be seen in the disparity between per capita spending. Total advertising revenues equate to more than $105 per inhabitant of the planet, while Internet advertising revenues are less than $50 per active Internet user."

Keyword ads will remain the dominant type of Internet advertising throughout the forecast period, capturing more than a third of annual online ad spending worldwide. Display ads will be the next largest type of Internet advertising, capturing more than 20% of worldwide spending annually through 2011, followed by classified ads with nearly 19% of all online ad spending per year. Spending in both categories will be pressured by rich media ads, which are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50% during the 2007-2011 forecast period.

"Marketers already recognize that online advertising must be incorporated into any comprehensive ad strategy. This will continue to drive growth in online ad spending well beyond the forecast period," said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Media and Entertainment. "However, there is still a lot of experimentation underway within the category as marketers seek the optimal mix of ad types to reach their target audience. This will fuel spending for all types of online ads."

Additional highlights from IDC's Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast include the following:

• The United States will lead the world in both total advertising spending and online ad spending throughout the forecast period with expenditures of more than $265 billion and $45 billion respectively in 2011.

• Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) will experience the fastest growth in Internet ad spending during the forecast period with a CAGR of 42.1% for CEE and 29.8% for MEA. Online advertising in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) will also experience dramatic growth with a 2007-2011 CAGR of 25.4%.

• Internet advertising will make the greatest gains relative to total ad spending in Western Europe, where online ad spending will capture 18.2% of total ad spending in 2011. This compares to a 16.3% share for online ad spending in Japan and 14.6% in the United States.

• More than $5 billion will be spent worldwide in 2008 in each of the top four categories of online ads adult content and gambling, information, electronics, and computing. These will continue to be the leading categories in 2011.

Source: IDC