Online Photo Business Develops Into Big War

The picture is changing fast for Internet photo-sharing sites.

Friday June 29, 7:00 pm ET

Pete Barlas, Yahoo Finance

Sites that were virtually unknown a year ago are growing quickly as more consumers go online to share and develop photos. That's prompting bigger players such as News Corp. and Google to acquire promising startups.

Traffic to Wal-Mart Stores' Photo Center, which had little online presence a year ago, is up over 700% -- far and away the most growth of any online photo site. Meanwhile, rivals Slide.com and Google's Picasa Web Albums follow with year-over-year jumps of more than 500%, says market tracker comScore Media Metrix.

Online photo-sharing sites are benefiting from a confluence of factors, especially changing consumer habits, says Jonathan Weitz, principal of IBB Consulting.

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Yahoo in mobile Internet service deal with 6 Asian carriers

The Jakarta Post

SINGAPORE (AP): Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday six mobile carriers in Asia will use Yahoo's Web-based search service as the default engine on their mobile portals.

The operators are Globe Telecom Inc. in the Philippines, Idea Cellular Ltd. in India, LG Telecom in Korea, Maxis Communications Bhd. in Malaysia, PT Telekomunikasi Selular in Indonesia and Taiwan Mobile in Taiwan.

The operators have about 100 million subscribers combined, Yahoo said during a press briefing at a telecommunications conference in Singapore.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet giant said the service will provide tailored and instant answers to any searches performed by cell phone users.

"These strategic partnerships demonstrate our commitment to invest in this (mobile) space and be the leader ... in Asia," said David Ko, vice president and general manager for a Yahoo division.

Ko declined to provide the financial terms of the deals reached with the six carriers. He said the company is in talks with operators in other regions for possible partnerships.

Yahoo has been losing ground to Google Inc. on the World Wide Web, an issue that some analysts say led to the resignation of Terry Semel as chief executive earlier this week. Co-founder Jerry Yang replaced Semel as chief executive.

Free web marketing prompts Unilever rethink

By Carlos Grande in Cannes

Yahoo Finance

The increasing benefit to Unilever brands of free marketing on the web is leading the Anglo-Dutch households goods group to change how it measures and evaluates one of the UK's biggest advertising budgets.

The owner of brands such as Dove, Lynx and Persil, is introducing new ways to track how its campaigns spread on the web – often with little or no paid for media advertising – as people post clips on homepages and blogs.

It has also mandated teams which control the group's expenditure on the web and other digital media to treat digital budgets as part of overall marketing, rather than simply as paid-for media investment.

Again, this reflects that money in digital campaigns often goes into production rather than distribution – the reverse of traditional media where buying television airtime, for instance, typically costs more than making a commercial.

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How I did it: fixing a broken team – a CIO's tale

Positive feedback can go a long way

Gary Flood, Computing Business 21 Jun 2007

Many years ago, I inherited a team of developers and network specialists. With confused reporting lines, conflicting priorities, muddled production and development targets, the team had ended up being seen as a hopeless pit of binary wasters.

The staff were fundamentally decent and caring – apart from one obviously alcoholic manager who tried to hit me one day. They cared about what they did, but felt that the rest of the company had it in for them.

They worked in an environment that was cramped, messy and depressing. It was clear from the broken desks, chairs, cables and run-down ceilings that IT had to suffer for its penance.

I talked to all the team and especially the more visionary team leaders. They were full of ideas on how to improve their productivity and how they wanted to improve the software and infrastructure.

The problem was nobody had asked them before.

Many were classic geeky oddballs – two were brilliant and disruptive and fought almost physically with one another – the simple answer would have been to sack them.

However, they were working on an important project – together. I placed them in separate areas of the building and they got on like best friends, using instant messenger and meeting only when I could referee.

Result: one great postscript and pagination project that is still in use today, 12 years later.

The IT team had to know that I believed in them and was a leader who would perish with them – our success was welded together – and it worked. We even received a call from Microsoft and duly trotted to Redmond for bagels and a chat – we thought they would invest, they thought we had re-written Microsoft SQL 2.5.

Traditionally, when times are bad, as managers and in life we revert to parent-child-type dialogues, such as: ‘Your behaviour is unacceptable, your homework is poor and you will fail your exams.’ This does not even work with my kids, never mind with adults.

So, do not beat up your employees. Your team are adults. Listen to their issues, let them understand your goals and keep reminding them they are professionals. Then they will live up to that name and not the derogatory ones they are used to.

Paul Broome is referring to a previous engagement at an unnamed company. He is now chief technology officer at 192.com.

IBM extends IT package to small businesses

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Responding to the need for affordable communications technology, PT IBM Indonesia is reaching out to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through a new version of its Express IT package.

Launched Thursday by the local unit of IBM Corporation, the fifth edition of Express offers a wide range of both software, hardware and related services at affordable prices to SMEs.

With component prices ranging from US$1,000 to $15,000, the new scheme will also offer investment-optimization and data-backup features, according to IBM Indonesia country manager Achirul Djamal.

Achirul added that Express was intended to answer the needs of SMEs for accessible technology at relatively affordable prices so as to enable them to compete with their larger competitors.

"The domestic IT market for SMEs currently stands at around US$1.6 billion, up 18 percent from last year. We hope Express will be able to capture around 20 percent of this market," said Achirul.

Currently, IBM Indonesia services around 2,500 SME clients in various industries, Achirul said.

First launched in 2002, Express, which is distributed by around 45 suppliers, accounts for more than 20 percent of IBM Indonesia's revenues.

Express was developed as part of a 10-year-old IBM Corporation worldwide business plan to tap the SME market.

Microsoft provides IT access to farmers

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

PT Microsoft Indonesia, the local unit of U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp., will provide online services and IT training to 64,800 farmers in 15 provinces over the next two years.

As part of the plan, Microsoft donated US$937,700 to the ASEAN Foundation and Formasi Indonesia, a local NGO, on Tuesday to fund the establishment of 100 community-learning centers (CTC) by the end of September.

"According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), farmers account for 45 million people. If we can provide them with access to IT, the positive effects on the whole community will be significant," said Microsoft president director Tony Chen.

The CTCs are expected to not only facilitate the provision of training to the 64,800 targeted farmers, but also to provide Internet access to 220,000 people, and introduce IT to three million rural dwellers.

Fifty-eight of the new CTCs will be built in six provinces in Java, including Jakarta, Banten and West Java, while 42 others will be established in nine provinces outside Java, including North Sumatra, Lampung and Bali.

Chen said the effects would include an increase in farmers' incomes and a decrease in unemployment and migration to the big cities.

"By being given access to IT and being taught how to use it, farmers will be able to develop their businesses, better market their products, expand their markets and obtain all sorts of agricultural information."

The 100 new CTCs come on top of the 30 CTCs that Microsoft has already established in 12 provinces since 2003. By the end of last year, it had donated $1.6 million in cash and software worth $3 million under its "IT-for-Farmers" scheme.

"Young farmers showed great enthusiasm about technology during the previous program," Chen said.

Besides teaming up with the ASEAN Foundation and Formasi, a networking organization concerned with the interests of farmers and small enterprises, Microsoft has also been working with the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), which helped design the IT-for-Farmers program.

The IT penetration rate in Indonesia, according to Chen, is very low. There are currently only six million PCs for Indonesia's 240 million people, meaning that the penetration rate is only 2.4 percent. Internet penetration is somewhat better at close to 10 percent.

DOJ Pushes Microsoft to Produce Vista SP1 in '07

It's unusual, but confirmation of the availability of Windows Vista's first service pack came not from Microsoft Corp., but from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

PC World, Wednesday, June 20, 2007 11:00 AM PDT

It's unusual, but confirmation of the availability of Windows Vista's first service pack came Tuesday not from Microsoft Corp., but from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Tucked into the government's 27-page joint status settlement report released late Tuesday was evidence that Microsoft will put the beta of Vista SP1 into users' hands before the end of the year. The report also confirmed Windows XP SP3, but did not specify beta or final release dates, although it said some code would be finalized this summer.

Microsoft has been loath to talk about either service pack, but has been particularly mum about Windows Vista SP1, a widely-anticipated bug update that some enterprise users are waiting on before deploying the new operating system.

As recently as April, when Intel Corp.'s CEO Paul Otellini hinted that Vista SP1 would likely release in October or November, Microsoft refused to confirm any schedule. "We will continue to take customer feedback from programs like the TAP [Technology Adoption Program], and will ultimately determine an official delivery date as the service pack is nearer to completion," a company spokeswoman said at the time.

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IBM Survey: CIO Role Is Changing; CEOs Need to Further Align IT and Business to Drive Innovation and Growth

(WebWire) 6/19/2007 8:20:39 PM

According to a global study just unveiled by IBM (NYSE: IBM), the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is evolving beyond just technology and computing support to strategy creation and business transformation. According to the IBM CIO Leadership Forum Survey, 84 percent of CIOs believe that technology is significantly or profoundly transforming their industries, yet only 16 percent feel their companies are taking full advantage of IT’s potential. IBM found that the state of business and technology points to the need for change in how technology is integrated into the core business.

Research also indicates the relationships required between the CIO and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), to ensure that the IT organization continues to drive business innovation and growth. According to IBM’s 2006 Global CEO Study extensive integrators were growing revenue 5 percent faster than their competitors. CEOs who extensively integrated business and technology reported greater customer satisfaction, speed and flexibility than their less integrated peers.

The IBM CIO Leadership Forum Study(1) was conducted with more than 170 CIOs from leading companies around the world and highlights the increasingly strategic role that technology and the CIO play in generating innovation and growth for their companies.

Additionally, according to comprehensive research conducted among Chief Executive Officers -- the IBM Global CEO Study(2) of 750 CEOs -- most companies face a gap in their integration of business and technology, impeding customer satisfaction, speed and flexibility. Nearly 80 percent of the CEOs interviewed rated business and technology integration of great importance, however only 45 percent felt that the two were integrated to a large extent in their enterprise. Interestingly, "extensive integrators" reported revenue increases three times as often as companies that were less integrated; with that group growing revenue 5 percent faster than their competitors.

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Google aims to go carbon-neutral by year-end

The Web search giant plans to cut or offset all of its greenhouse emissions by the end of 2007 by investing in efficiency, renewable energy and carbon offsets.

CNNMoney.com

June 19 2007: 7:00 PM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Google aims to voluntarily cut or offset all of its greenhouse emissions by the end of the year, the Web search leader said Tuesday.

Google is one of a number of companies - including News Corp. and Yahoo! - that are attempting to cut emissions of gases scientists link to global warming.

To make the cuts, Google is investing in energy efficiency, renewable energy like solar and will purchase carbon offsets for emissions it cannot reduce directly, the company said.

Google, Intel in 'green' initiative

"On their own, carbon offsets are not capable of creating the kinds of fundamental changes to our energy infrastructure that will be necessary to stabilize global greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels," Google said on its Web site.

"But we believe that offsets can offer real, measurable and additional emissions reductions that allow us to take full responsibility for our footprint today."

European companies can invest in carbon offsets through a Kyoto Protocol U.N. program that allows rich countries to invest in clean projects in developing nations. The United States did not ratify the Kyoto pact, but some U.S. companies have begun to offset emissions on a voluntary, unregulated basis.

Google said it would invest in projects like capturing and burning methane, a greenhouse gas with about 20 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, from animal waste at Mexican and Brazilian farms.

"Our funding makes it possible for anaerobic digesters to be installed, which capture and flare the bio gas produced while simultaneously improving local air quality and reducing land and water contamination," Google said.

Shopping to stop global warming?

Separately, Google is planning to spend $600 million to build a data center in western Iowa that will receive power from a MidAmerican Energy plant fired by coal, the fuel that emits the most carbon dioxide. A Google spokesman told Reuters all emissions from its Iowa project were accounted for in its carbon neutral plan.

Nonprofit emissions advisers, The Climate Group, said they will partner with Google to support its offset plans.

Google last week launched a program with semiconductor-maker Intel to introduce more energy-efficient personal computers and server systems.

News Corp. pledged in May to become carbon-neutral by 2010.

UGM starts CIO postgraduate program

The Jakarta Post

Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta started its Chief Information Officer postgraduate program this year with an inaugural lecture on June 4.

The program offers classes and training to improve the competency of people working in the communications and information field.

This program is designed by UGM's information technology postgraduate program (MTI). Each student will follow classes for 16 months focusing on strategy and management of information technology.

The school perceives communication and information technology as the application of technology with a sociocultural approach. Consequently, students will also take nontechnical subjects such as law, economics and management.

Google Plans Shanghai R&D Center

Search giant tries to make more headway in China, where it faces a local rival.

Steven Schwankert, IDG News Service

PCWorld, Sunday, June 17, 2007 7:00 AM PDT

Google plans to open a research and development center in Shanghai, stepping up its effort to build a bigger search business in China.

Google has struggled in China to create the dominance it enjoys elsewhere in the world. It took 19 percent of the country's search market revenue in the first quarter, compared with 57 percent for market leader Baidu.com, according to Analysys International, a telecom research and consulting company.

A spokesperson for Google in China, Marsha Wang, confirmed the plans for an R&D lab Friday. She declined to say how many people it will employ or provide other details.

Google and its U.S. rivals, Yahoo, and Microsoft, have faced political difficulties in China, for agreeing to censor search results. In addition, their services are sometimes hard to access from inside the country. Yahoo's Flickr division said this week that its service was being blocked in China.

Two more space station computers revived

By William Harwood, Spaceflight Now

Posted: June 16, 2007

Hoping for the best, space station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov hot wired two computers aboard the international space station today that engineers had feared were victims of fatal power supply failures. To everyone's delight, the machines promptly booted up and appeared to be running normally, two more successes in an improbable recovery from crippling computer crashes last week.

Two of the three computers making up the Russian segment's guidance, navigation and control computers, along with two of three central control computers, were successfully revived Friday when Yurchikhin and Kotov used jumper cables to bypass suspect surge protectors in secondary power supply circuits.

The redundant so-called soft switches were designed to shut off power to their respective computers in the event of surges or spikes in the incoming electricity. Engineers now believe the installation of a new solar power truss last Monday triggered a subtle change in the station's power grid that somehow caused the secondary power supply switches to respond, preventing their computers from booting up.

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Seven Myths About Outsourcing

No. 1: 'We can have it all'

By Phanish Puranam and Kannan Srikanth

The Wallstreet Journal Online, June 16, 2007

In recent years, there's been a seemingly endless boom in offshore outsourcing. But companies that think handing off an operation to an overseas provider is easy can get a rude awakening.

The transition often proves to be much more costly and complicated than expected. And companies often find that their high hopes about cost savings and greater efficiency don't pan out.

To get a better understanding of the problems and solutions, we conducted a survey of senior executives at 62 of the 100 largest financial-services firms in the U.S. and Europe. Arguably, this industry is the deepest repository of leading-edge practices in outsourcing and offshoring. We also conducted approximately 100 interviews with outsourcing clients and vendors from financial services as well as other sectors such as pharmaceuticals and the media.

We found seven common myths that vendors and clients cling to about offshore outsourcing -- false assumptions about how the process should work. They range from unrealistic expectations to poor ideas about how to structure contracts to mistaken views of risk. These ideas can prove deadly to the success of outsourcing projects and even to an organization's overall services-sourcing strategy.

Here's a look at those destructive myths, and how to overcome them.

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Space station computers to be replaced - where's the hot site?

By Stan Beer, ITWire

Saturday, 16 June 2007

As the International Space Station management rushes to reassure the public that a US$100 billion plus project is not going to drift off into space, the latest reports circulating through the world media suggest that the entire bank of failed Russian computers may have to be replaced. The entire episode highlights hopelessly inadequate operational computer systems and, as each day passes, management with its back to the wall issuing conflicting reports.

One minute we are being told that the computer power supplies need to be replaced; another minute suggestions emerge that the entire bank of computers needs to replaced. Then we are told that the space station crew will be able to stay aboard; if they have to leave, though, the space station will be able to survive without a crew for a few months.

Amid all the conflicting reports, incredible as it seems, no-one has been able to pinpoint exactly how and why the computers failed. The prevailing view is that a power surge, caused by bringing a new solar panel array online, was the underlying cause. If so, the question remains as to how it came to be that mission critical computer systems were not isolated from such a surge.

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Rapid take-up on Windows' Safari

BBC News

Apple's new web browser for Windows was downloaded more than a million times in the first 48 hours of its release, the computer group has said.

The Windows version of Apple's Safari will compete head-on with Microsoft's Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox and expand the 4.9% market share it enjoys.

Steve Jobs launched "the fastest browser on Windows", saying it was twice as fast as Internet Explorer.

It was previously only available for Macintosh computers.

A test version of Safari 3 for Windows XP, Vista and Apple Macs running OSX, is available for download from the Apple website.

Apple is hoping to replicate the success of iTunes, which has proved enormously popular on both Macs and Windows machines.

Security researchers say they have already found numerous loopholes in the browser which might possibly allow attackers access to users' computers.

On Tuesday, Apple issued an update to the program, to fix some of the potential security flaws.

Cause of computer breakdown on international space station still unknown: Russian official

International Herald Tribune

Published: June 15, 2007

MOSCOW (AP) : The crew of the international space station and support staff on the ground have been unable to pinpoint the source of a computer failure on the orbital outpost's Russian module that is affecting its orientation, a space official said Friday.

The six computers in the station's Russian segment broke down earlier this week, and attempts to find the reason and fix the problem have failed, said Valery Lyndin, the spokesman for Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow.

Lyndin stressed that "the lives of the crew are not in danger" and there were no plans to evacuate the crew. He said the station's oxygen-regeneration and all basic life-support systems were functioning properly.

However, he said, the station's orientation system was affected, because the broken computers control thrusters on the Russian module that are fired to orient the station toward the sun so its solar panels can soak up the maximum amount of energy.

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Google, Intel launch energy efficiency program

Tue Jun 12, 2007 6:01pm ET26

By Leonard Anderson

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 12 (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc. and semiconductor maker Intel Corp. launched a broad-based program on Tuesday to introduce more energy-efficient personal computers and server systems to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Called the "Climate Savers Computing Initiative," the new program has signed on computer makers Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Lenovo Group Ltd., software maker Microsoft Corp., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and more than 25 environmental groups, companies and universities for the energy savings campaign.

The program will set new efficiency goals for computers and software tools that manage power consumption.

The program requires a 90 percent efficiency standard for power supplies, said Urs Holzle, senior vice president of operations at Google.

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Jobs Offers Developers Web 2.0 Apps For iPhone

Applications built for the iPhone would run in a sandbox separate from the device's OS to keep hackers out.

By Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek

Jun 12, 2007 06:01 AM

Apple says it plans to let developers build Web 2.0 applications for the iPhone, a move that slightly opens the door to a mostly closed environment.

Steve Jobs made the announcement Monday towards the end of his opening keynote at the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Most of the speech was dedicated to new features in Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X that ships in October.

In offering mobile developers a bit of hope for getting their applications on the iPhone, Jobs said the combo cell phone and digital music player, which ships June 29, would contain a full-featured version of Safari 3. The latest upgrade of Apple's Web browser was released in beta for PCs and Macs on Monday.

As a result, developers could leverage the tools they currently use to build applications in Ajax, and run them through Safari to call iPhone services, Jobs said. Ajax is a development technique that uses JavaScript and XML to create interactive Web applications. Web 2.0 companies like Salesforce.com and Google make extensive use of the technique.

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SAP Reveals Co-Innovation Lab And Envisions Web 3.0

Yahoo Finance / Seeking Alpha

Friday June 8, 4:25 am ET

Dan Farber (ZDNet) summits: SAP held a dog and pony show, including a ribbon cutting ceremony, for the unveiling of its new Co-Innovation Lab in Palo Alto. “The intention is for this to be a working lab, not just a slick showcase for customers,” said Zia Yusef, executive vice president of the Global Ecosystem and Partner Group at SAP.

SAP and partners, including Cisco, HP, Intel and NetApp as well as ISVs and systems integrators, will work on joint projects and utilize a simulated, heterogeneous data center with hardware and software from participating vendors. The Co-Innovation Lab houses 1,600 SAP employees, including 1,000 engineers.

It’s not exactly a keiretsu, but a compatible federation of companies that have a shared interest in building next-generation solutions, not just products, that integrate with SAP’s ERP and NetWeaver platform.

“There is a constant demand from ISV partners to sit down with our developers and engage and imagine the future. We should not forget the human collaboration necessary to make innovation happen,” Yusef said. For SAP, the Lab provides a showcase for its SOA-based platform and allows ISVs to test and demonstrate its products in a real world environment, and also highlight partner products.

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Innovation and Business Network Transformation

At its Sapphire user conference, SAP talks about how companies eventually must build differentiation around their business networks.

By Jennifer Zaino, bITa Planet, April 24, 2007

Integration is the byword for the next generation business. Process integration, partner integration, acquisition integration, all must come together in the service of business network transformation.

“It’s clear that business networks are now the primary source for new differentiation.” That was the message from SAP CEO Henning Kagermann in his keynote Tuesday morning at SAP’s Sapphire event in Atlanta.

(Source: CIO Weblog)

The mechanics behind that include service-enabling the SAP Business Suite on a business process platform; enabling the fast model-driven creation of composite applications via SAP Netweaver CE (a subset of the Netweaver platform); and by next year offering every six-months enhancement packages from which users can optionally activate content, functional enhancements, new enterprise services, new user interface improvements, and new lightweight composite applications.

The goal, Kagermann says, is to help customers innovate faster while avoiding lengthy, risky and expensive upgrades.

Agility and Speed

“Our product enables business network transformation, so we must innovate across all industries and players of all sizes,” he said. “Innovation for industries will mainly be driven through composites — that’s how we’ll bring the next business practices to market without disrupting the core. If it becomes a best practice we’ll consolidate it to the core.”

Two trends are driving companies to business network transformation, according to Kagermann: the pace of business change and increasing commoditization.

A new acquisition takes place every 20 minutes, he said, and the time to integrate systems is shortening. Meanwhile, a new product hits the market every 3.5 minutes, ripe for copycatting, and leading companies to try to move up the value chain by collaborating more closely with business partners to deliver seamless service bundles to clients.

“Whatever strategy you follow is about agility, speed, and acting fast,” he says. Business network transformation must meet enterprise SOA, in order to quickly make the connections and reconnections companies need as businesses combine or customer demand shifts.

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The CIO As Liaison And Guide

As the pressure ratchets up for IT to become business focused, innovative and strategic, Deloitte Consulting maps out the obstacles and offers guidance for CIOs seeking to become the "CEO of IT."

By Eugene Lukac, Specialist Leader, and Peter McBrearty, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Optimize, June 2007

Businessinnovation

Congratulations! You've made it to the post of CIO. Unfortunately, the skills that propelled you up the IT ladder won't necessarily help you to stay in the position for long. If you're like most CIOs, you advanced by delivering on-time and on-budget technology projects. Therefore, it might be reasonable to assume that if you can continue delivering successful projects, you will live happily ever after, right? Wrong. If that's your attitude, you're heading for a fall — and given average CIO tenure, probably within two to three years, maximum.

That's right, technical skills along with some people savvy won't take you far enough. Today's CIO must be " first and foremost " a business executive, just like all senior executives. That means being motivated by the same things as other business leaders, using the same language they do and above all, effectively controlling costs. Indeed, managing cost (both within IT and the company at large) is typically "table stakes" for a CIO. If you don't figure out how to be successful at this, you likely won't be around long enough to achieve anything else.

Along with managing costs, successful CIOs today need to also focus on deploying technology to support the company in achieving its goals, rather than pondering the relative "elegance" of technology alternatives. The CIO must be able to talk about business solutions, competitive advantage, innovations, and customers " all of the things that drive the other business executives. Technology is primarily an enabler; business strategy and metrics are paramount.

The CIO with staying power views himself or herself as the CEO of the IT business within the overall company. Here, the CIO's language should reflect a shift to a CEO's priorities to the point where he or she starts talking about the IT organization's products and services, its internal market and its shareholders. It's not enough anymore to be a savvy technologist who took over the top job in IT: the CIO must become a business leader.

A contemporary CIO should help the company establish a clear "line of sight" between technology and business issues. The CIO must also educate business executives as to how technology can drive business results. CIOs should strive to help their internal customers understand technology and mine its potential to better serve not just their own customers but also their customers' customers.

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Navy CIO OKs open source systems

By John Rendleman, Defensesystems.com

Open-source software is now an official option for all information technology systems in the Navy and Marine Corps, according to a guidance memo issued June 5 by the Department of the Navy’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

The Open-Source Guidance memo gives open-source platforms the same status as commercial off-the-shelf and government off-the-shelf software products, allowing Navy IT administrators to evaluate open-source code in acquisitions.

The department “recognizes the importance of [open-source software] to the warfighter and the need to leverage its benefits throughout the [Department of the Navy],” according to the memo issued by Navy CIO Robert Carey.

In 2004, the Navy’s previous CIO, David Wennergren, formed a working group to formulate the Navy’s open-source software policy based on positive results from a cooperative research and development agreement between the Naval Oceanographic Office of the department’s Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command and the industry-backed Open Software Institute.

Wireless Energy Lights Bulb from Seven Feet Away

Physicists vow to cut the cord between your laptop battery and the wall socket—with just a simple loop of wire

By JR Minkel, Scientific America.com

If you thought wireless Internet made life convenient, try wrapping your mind around wireless power. Researchers have successfully lit a 60-watt light bulb by transferring energy through the air from one specially designed copper coil to the bulb, which was attached to a second coil seven feet away [see image at right]. The ultimate goal: to shrink the coils and increase the distance between them so that a single base station emitting "WiTricity," as the inventors refer to the effect, could power a roomful of rechargeable gadgets, each containing its own small coil.

EUREKA! WIRELESS LIGHT BULB
demonstrates a new approach for transmitting
power through the air between two coils
of copper wire, even when separated by an

obstruction [bottom].

Physicists have known for more than a century that a moving magnetic field produces an electric field and vice versa in an effect called electromagnetic induction, which makes motors turn and allows your, say, electric toothbrush to recharge when placed on its base station. But induction normally works only at very short distances, which is why the toothbrush and base station must touch.

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Apple, Google Connect on iPhone

By Daniel Del'Re, TheStreet.com Staff Reporter

6/7/2007 6:26 AM EDT

The march toward Apple's iPhone launch has sparked widespread buzz, but the bigger development may be how the device is bringing together two titans of tech.

Beginning with the iPhone, Apple and Internet search leader Google are set to cross paths in more than one way as the companies stake their claim in the growing mobile market for communications, entertainment and Internet browsing.

Apple has already intimated that its new phone, selling at $500 for the base model, will come loaded with Google's search and mapping applications. And last week, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs announced that videos from Google's YouTube can be streamed wirelessly from computers to Apple TV set-top boxes for viewing on televisions.

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Internet advertising revenue up 26% from year ago

By John Letzing

Last Update: 6:55 PM ET Jun 6, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Revenue from online advertising grew sharply in the first quarter of this year, according to data released Wednesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Internet advertising revenue rose to $4.9 billion in the quarter, a 26% increase over the first quarter of 2006.

The IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers' survey covered advertising on Web sites, email, and other online services, the IAB said in a statement posted online. The growth in online advertising has spurred a consolidation in the industry, with online services companies Google Inc.

Banco Sabadell and IBM to Jointly Innovate in Web 2.0 for Financial Services

Joint Innovation Task Force to Explore Application of New Web 2.0 Technologies

Yahoo Finance, Tuesday June 5, 9:37 am ET

BARCELONA, SPAIN--(MARKET WIRE)--Jun 5, 2007 -- IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) today announced that it has signed an agreement with Banco Sabadell, one of Spain's biggest banking groups, to jointly develop Web 2.0 technologies for the financial sector. The two companies will create an Innovation task force to be staffed with employees from both organizations.

Both companies will collaborate on adapting Web 2.0 technologies ranging from social networking software, Internet collaboration, blogs, RSS feeds and Web services for use in the financial services industry. The collaboration will help to accelerate application development, create applications for different devices and ultimately make access to financial services simpler and easier.

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Salesforce.com, Google form software alliance

Yahoo Finance, Tuesday June 5, 8:10 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Software maker Salesforce.com Inc. said it reached an agreement with Google to make Web-based software applications that help businesses improve sales and marketing.

The combination, which includes a product called Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, links Salesforce's Customer Relations Management (CRM) software with Google's AdWords online advertising system.

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Toyota's Big Fix: An IS Department Turnaround

How Toyota's CIO radically restructured her entire approach to IT and regained the trust of the business.

By Thomas Wailgum, CIO

April 15, 2005 — CIO — At Toyota Motor Sales USA's headquarters in Torrance, Calif., there's a circular patch of manicured earth that separates the IS building and corporate headquarters. A brook winds its way through lush flowers and pine trees, and a terraced path connects the two buildings.

For many years, this was about the only thing the two groups shared with each other.

For the business execs at Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) peering across the courtyard at the Data building, the deep black windows were a symbol of IS's opacity. These executives felt that IS was unresponsive, and they had little clue where the money was going. "One of the complaints was that we spent a lot of money on IT projects, and [the business] was frequently disappointed with the results," recalls Bob Daly, group vice president of Toyota Customer Services. Daly says badly handled projects-such as a delayed PeopleSoft ERP implementation and a protracted parts inventory initiative-led to finger-pointing between the two factions.

Meanwhile, behind the darkened windows of the Data building, Barbra Cooper's IS staff was buried under the weight of six enterprisewide projects and could barely keep their heads above water. Called the Big Six, they included a new extranet for Toyota dealers and the PeopleSoft ERP rollout, as well as four new systems for order management, parts forecasting, advanced warranty and financial document management. Feeling besieged, the IS group made the mistake of not explaining to the business all the things it was doing and how much it all cost. It was a classic case of mismanaged expectations and fractured alignment.

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Apple confirms June 29 as iPhone launch date

by Shubha Krishnappa - June 4, 2007

The Money Times

Apple Inc.'s upcoming revolutionary iPhone, an all-in-one cell phone/iPod/pocket computer which has recently won the required approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is due to hit the market shelves in United States on June, 29, according to three TV commercials that began airing on Sunday night and posted on the company's Web site.

This widely anticipated gadget, which combines three amazing products, a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching, into one small and lightweight handheld device, is priced at $499 for 4-gigabyte model and $599 for an 8-gigabyte model, Apple said previously.

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Westerners Commute to Asia to Get M.B.A.s

Students See Region As Crucial to Careers;

Schools Extend Reach

By CRIS PRYSTAY, The Wall Street Journal

When William Lee, a manager at Microsoft Corp., decided to seek to leapfrog his career by getting an M.B.A., he signed up for a joint-venture executive program in Singapore run by the Anderson School of Business of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National University of Singapore. Mr. Lee, 37 years old, lives in Reno, Nevada, and his job is entirely based in the U.S. By the time he graduates in August, he will have flown to Asia four times over 15 months to earn a degree he easily could have done at home.

The commute is worth it, he said. This way he can ramp up his Asia experience to help fast-forward his career.

"That's where the economic growth is. If you want to be a business leader in the next 10 to 15 years, understanding the Asian business environment is important," Mr. Lee said. "When I was weighing which school to go to, credibility came to mind. The perception that I have a better understanding of the environment is easier to sell when I can say I've gone over there to study and observe the business environment and meet Asian business leaders."

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Strong CIOs Benefit The Business And IT

The Optimize "Defining the CIO" study shows CIO roles strengthening, which is good news for IT and the business as a whole.

By Brian Gillooly

Optimize, June 2007, Issue 68

When we develop the questionnaire each March for our annual "Defining the CIO" research project, as an objective journalist I don't hope for any particular outcome—positive or negative—I just anticipate interesting results. While I admit a certain admiration and respect for CIOs and other IT professionals, if our survey reveals trouble spots in the CIO career path, we report them and hope we're offering valuable information for a course correction. As I've often said, we'd be doing CIOs a disservice if we blindly and self-servingly championed the role if, in fact, things weren't so rosy.

This year's survey results are mostly very positive: More people believe the CIO's influence is increasing, and more say their CIO is included in important business decisions. What's remarkable is that this comes when many have been questioning the CIO's impact.

To me, the data reveals a snapshot of the overall market. There are still challenges. CIOs still struggle with balancing "maintenance IT" with "innovation IT." Also, as I mention in my "CIO Nation" blog, some enterprise-software vendors acknowledge they often bypass CIOs when trying to make a sale because they feel business-unit users know what they want. This is a trend we'll follow. But our research shows a marked increase in regular interaction between CIOs and their line-of-business colleagues.

So, although vendors may try to sidestep IT, it won't be easy. Business folks are becoming more tech-savvy—and that's good. But CIOs are gaining in business knowledge, and that's even better. For everyone involved.

Dell Lays Off 8,000; 1Q Earnings Sag

Dell Announces More Than 8,000 in Layoffs as Slight Drop in 1Q Earnings Beats Estimates

Yahoo Finance

By Matt Slagle, AP Technology Writer, Friday June 1, 12:19 am ET

DALLAS (AP) -- Dell Inc. beat Wall Street predictions in its first-quarter earnings report but said it would eliminate 10 percent of its work force over the next year as part of a broad plan to trim costs and become more competitive with rivals.

The computer maker said it earned $759 million, or 34 cents per share, in the three months ended May 4, down slightly from $762 million, or 33 cents per share, in the year-ago period. Sales rose nearly 1 percent to $14.6 billion.

The results beat analysts' predicted earnings of 26 cents per share on sales $13.95 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Financial.

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