Reports: Google CEO to stump for Obama

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal 

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Schmidt has also been providing unofficial advice to the Democratic hopeful on energy and technology issues, and speculation swirls around whether he could be in line for a Chief Technical Officer post Obama has said he would create in his administration.

Schmidt has said Google is neutral in the campaign. The Mountain View-based company's employees have donated a total of $487,355 to Obama's campaign, according to reports. They've given $20,600 to Sen. John McCain's.

Both Obama and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) have said they are in favor of limiting the rate changes Internet providers can make for different levels of service. 

Schmidt follows on the heels of other tech executives who also became involved in the presidential race: former Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina, San Jose-baed eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman and San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) CEO John Chambes have been advising and stumping for McCain.

H-P Plans to Unveil Smart Phone

Justin Scheck, The Wall Street Journal

Hewlett-Packard Co., aiming to grow its device business beyond corporate users, is preparing to release a new smart phone that will also be marketed to consumers, according to people briefed on the plan. The device will debut in Europe, these people say, and will be sold by a mobile carrier in retail stores.

The new device will have a touchscreen and keypad and will use Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system, say people briefed on the plan. It will be able to send and receive emails, and access the Internet.

The phone is the latest version of H-P's iPaq devices. H-P, which has been 

selling iPaq-branded devices since it acquired personal-computer maker Compaq Computer Corp. in 2002, primarily focused earlier iPaqs on businesses and typically didn't sell them through retail stores.

The new phone will likely be released in Europe within the next two months, say people familiar with the matter. It will later be released world-wide.

H-P spokesman Mike Hockey said the most recent iPaq device, a business-oriented smart phone, was launched in June. H-P trails behind manufacturers like Nokia Corp. and Research in Motion Ltd. in world-wide smart-phone sales, according to market researcher IDC, with less than a 3.3% global market share. Mr. Hockey said, "the iPaq brand is extremely strong around the world, especially in the European market."

Globalization and IT: Exclusive CIO Survey

It's official: Today's CIOs are global. Explore the details of Smart Enterprise's international survey of IT leaders. 

By Bob Violino, Smart Enterprise

Today's CIOs need to think globally—and act globally. Exclusive new research by Smart Enterprise shows just how globalized business has become, and the huge impact it has had on CIOs and their IT operations. In fact, globalization affects nearly every facet of IT and the CIO's role in the organization. What's more, at a time when the sluggish U.S. economy is straining many IT projects, globalization provides CIOs with a new opportunity to invest in technology that can help their organizations expand into new markets. 

While most enterprises already do business internationally, what's new is the central role IT now plays. CIOs support international expansion efforts, and they are expected to help their organizations succeed in today's global marketplace. 

Indeed, more than 60 percent of IT executives in the U.S. work for organizations that serve customers outside the country, according to the Smart Enterprise "2008 Globalization & IT" survey. Nearly the same percentage of U.S. respondents have business operations or offices outside the U.S. Half have non-U.S. product suppliers, and more than 40 percent work with international third-party technology service providers or shared services. In fact, just one-quarter of the 350 executives worldwide surveyed by Smart Enterprise work for organizations that operate only in the U.S. (For more on the survey methodology, see "How the Globalization & IT Survey Was Conducted") 

Other key findings of the Smart Enterprise "2008 Globalization & IT" survey: 

• Globalization has led CIOs to increase spending in areas that include security, IT infrastructure, network infrastructure and compliance. For example, more than 40 percent of the survey respondents say globalization has driven them to spend more on IT infrastructure this year.
  
• Globalization affects the way IT executives address several key issues, including planning, collaboration, leadership and compliance. For example, when it comes to leadership, globalization affects the way over 65 percent of IT executives manage up, and how 75 percent handle relationships with partners and suppliers.
  
• The leading driver of accelerated IT projects is globalization. In fact, among respondents who are accelerating major projects, nearly 70 percent attribute the acceleration to globalization.
  
• To support global efforts, organizations rely on a variety of technology solutions. These include network and end-point security, online collaboration, teleconferencing, and network and storage consolidation and virtualization.
  
• To help support global issues, technology leaders believe they must enhance a number of their own professional skills, including their understanding of business issues, leadership skills and technical skills.
  
  

Read whole article  ....

America, We Have A Problem

Norman R. Augustine, Forbes.com,  March 24 2008, 6:00 AM ET

Congress recently scrambled to place a $152 billion Band-Aid on the nation's economy, but the underlying problems are likely to require such fixes with increasing frequency in the future.

These problems were brought to the fore three years ago when the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine--organizations that count 195 Nobel Laureates among their membership--conducted a study on America's ability to compete for jobs in an emerging global economy where five chemists in China or 20 assembly workers in Vietnam can be hired for the cost of one of these workers in America, and where physicians in India now read the CAT scans of patients in American hospitals. 

The resulting report, titled Rising Above the Gathering Storm, concluded that without both a dramatic increase in investment in basic research and reform of the nation's K-12 educational system, America's children are likely to have a lower standard of living than their parents. 

The report's warning did not go unheeded. 

A new research university is scheduled to launch soon with a day-one endowment of $10 billion, equal to what it took MIT 142 years to accumulate. Next year, over 200,000 students will study abroad, mostly in the fields of science and engineering, often under government-provided scholarships. Government investment in nondefense R&D is set to increase by 25% over the next few years. 

A multi-year initiative is under way to make the country a global nanotechnology hub. The world's most powerful particle accelerator will begin operation this year. And a high-level commission will conduct a followup to the Gathering Storm study with the objective of creating more jobs at home. 

The problem is that these actions were taken by Saudi Arabia, China, the U.K., India, Switzerland and Australia, respectively. As chair of the committee that wrote Gathering Storm, I have been asked to speak about its findings from Japan to Canada and from Australia to Europe. But what about America? 

Since the report was issued, the world-renowned Fermilab in Illinois responded to reductions in government research funding with layoffs and mandatory two-day-a-month unpaid "holidays" for its research staff. The U.S. portion of the international program to develop plentiful energy through nuclear fusion is being reduced to "survival mode." 

The U.S. trade deficit in high-technology goods further increased. Nearly all major U.S. high-tech firms now have research laboratories outside the country and are poised to expand them. American companies spent three times more on litigation than on research. 

Eighty percent of American CFOs surveyed said they would curtail R&D in order to meet short-term profit projections. The latest international standardized test for high school seniors in 30 nations revealed that students in only four nations performed significantly worse than U.S. students in science, and only five rated worse in math. Two-thirds of the Ph.D.s in engineering awarded by U.S. universities went to non-U.S. citizens. And U.S. K-12 teachers were reported to have worked 43 hours to earn $1,000, while Kobe Bryant earned that amount in five minutes and 30 seconds, and Howard Stern in only 24 seconds. 

Industrial firms in the U.S. and elsewhere have found an answer to these problems. 

Howard High, spokesman for Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) prior to his retirement, explains, "We go where the smart people are. Now our business operations are two-thirds in the U.S. and one-third overseas. But that ratio will flip over in the next 10 years." General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ) spokesman Greg Martin put it: "We're a global car company that happens to be based in the U.S." Addressing root causes, Bill Gates observed, "When I compare our high schools with what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I'm terrified for our workforce of tomorrow." 

The irony is that America's leaders seem convinced of the importance of fixing K-12 math and science education and increasing government investment in basic research. In fact, the president made specific proposals to those ends in his 2006 State of the Union address, and the resulting authorization passed in the House 397-20 and the Senate by unanimous consent. However, due to an avalanche of 12,000 earmarks (Stanislaw Lee observed that "each snowflake in an avalanche pleads 'not guilty' "), and exacerbated by what can perhaps best be characterized as a system failure, the omnibus budget act that actually provides the funds to implement the government's programs failed to address America's competitiveness in any meaningful way. 

Churchill said that you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else. Our nation's leaders need to succeed in their bipartisan efforts to help Americans compete in a job market increasingly dominated by 3 billion would-be capitalists who entered the workplace after many of the world's political systems were restructured at the end of the last century. Otherwise, our nation's greatest export is likely to be our jobs and our standard of living. 

Norman Augustine is retired chairman of Lockheed Martin, former undersecretary of the Army and past chair of the National Academy of Engineering.

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Gartner IT Security Summit: Unilever launches staff security drive

Warwick Ashford, www.computerweekly.com, 15:43 29 Sep

Food manufacturer Unilever is tackling the human element of information security by introducing a global awareness programme across the organisation.

The company has recognised that most data breaches are not caused by technology failure, but by the lack of secure behaviour by employees with access to company data.

More than 140,000 IT users across the business in 150 countries will be required to complete a 20-minute security briefing and test in the coming months.

The second-life styled interactive online programme contains guidelines on how best to protect information in a variety of different business situations.

The "teach and test" programme, which is customised according to each employee's role, has been introduced as part of the company's information security communication initiative.

Andrew Strong, global security director at Unilever, said, "The initiative is aimed at changing the perception of security and ensuring each employee understands what is good behaviour for keeping information safe."

The "teach and test" programme is available through a security portal, which the company plans to use to update employees on changing security risks, procedures and policies.

"We can easily communicate key contemporary issues such as how to deal with laptop security checks at airports," said Strong.

Unilever plans to conduct regular internal and external surveys to measure behavioural change and assess whether key risks are being addressed and adapt security training accordingly.

Ballmer Still Searching for an Answer to Google

James Niccolai, IDG News Service

Microsoft may be the only company in a position to provide "any real competition" for Google in the online search business, CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday. But first it will need to figure out a way to do it.

"We need to do some work to fundamentally reinvent the search business model," Ballmer said during a dinner at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley. "You don't brute-force your way into a market. You only make great strides when you redefine the category for the user."

And that will take some time. "It's a five-year task," Ballmer said. But Microsoft is ready to spend a lot of money trying. The company told its shareholders recently that it was prepared to lose "5 to 10 percent of total operating income for several years" to improve its position in search, Ballmer said.

The CEO offered little in the way of new insights during the evening, except that Microsoft will discuss "Project Red Dog," its secretive cloud computing initiative, at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference next month.

Red Dog has been described as "EC2 for Windows," a comparison with Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, said Ann Winblad, the venture capitalist who posed the questions to Ballmer. She asked him to elaborate but he said she would have to wait for the conference in six weeks.

Asked about server virtualization, Ballmer said Microsoft aims to "democratize" the technology by offering lower prices, integrated management tools and better-quality software. "If you want to have virtualization on 80 percent of servers instead of 5 percent, you'd better not charge three times the price of the server for the software," he said, in a jab at market leader VMware, which has been criticized for high prices.

Asked about smartphones, Ballmer said Nokia, Research in Motion and Apple will all lose out as the market expands over the next five years, because they design their own proprietary hardware and tie it closely to their software.

Nokia leads the smartphone market today with about a 30 percent share, he said. "If you want to reach more than that, you have to separate the hardware and software in the platform," he said.

In other words, he thinks the same strategy that helped Microsoft become the leader on the desktop -- licensing its OS for use by other hardware makers -- will let it win out on smartphones. Long term, he said, the battle will be between the Symbian OS (which is now open source), mobile versions of Linux and Windows Mobile.

Apple won't boost its share of the personal computer market or become a threat in the enterprise for similar reasons, according to Ballmer -- because it won't license its software to others.

"Apple's a good company, I won't take anything away from them, but they have a certain kind of strategy. They believe in putting the hardware and software together, they don't believe in letting other people make it."

"I'm not saying there isn't a threat" from Apple, he said. But if Microsoft and its PC partners "do our jobs right, there's really no reason Apple should get any footprint in the enterprise."

Microsoft does "very well on balance" when it comes to software developers, he said. But the company has two areas of weakness, according to Ballmer: high-performance and technical computing -- which is important to Microsoft because "there are 5 million engineers and they use a lot of compute power" -- and in Web server applications, where it is losing out to Linux and PHP.

"Forty percent of servers run Windows, 60 percent run Linux," he said. "How are we doing? Forty is less than 60, so I don't like it. ... We have some work to do."

Winblad asked about the health of the IT business in light of the economic crisis in the U.S. "At least for now, people I talk to in our business are relatively -- I wouldn't say optimistic -- but feel better than if all you did was watch CNBC all day," Ballmer said, referring to the U.S. television news channel.

A member of the audience asked Ballmer how he manages his stress and stays healthy. Ballmer, who looks thinner and fitter than he did a few years ago, said his regime consists of PowerBars "to keep the blood sugar steady," "a constant dose of caffeine," and running.

"I did a five-mile run this morning. It does a lot to ease the stress and set up a good day."

Microsoft sets pricing, fee sharing for services

By Daisuke Wakabayashi, Tuesday July 8, 9:06 am ET

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (NasdaqGS:MSFT - News) introduced on Wednesday pricing for its suite of online services targeted at corporate customers and a revenue-sharing plan to encourage other companies to sell the software company's products.

The company plans to charge corporate customers a monthly subscription of $15 per user for a suite of "hosted" software, which includes e-mail, Web meeting, collaboration and messaging applications running on Microsoft's computers.

Microsoft Online Services is part of the software maker's effort to capitalize on the shift by corporate customers to abandon their own in-house computer systems for "cloud computing," a less expensive alternative.

The company built its business selling software to run on individual machines, both computer servers that power entire businesses and personal computers. But, in recent years, it has invested billion of dollars in massive data centers, which are the basic infrastructure for a wide range of Web services.

It has started offering corporate customers the option of having Microsoft run their e-mail, collaboration or sales programs on the software giant's computers and delivering those applications over the Web as a monthly subscription service.

"We're seeing customers, partners and even competitors embrace this flexible approach to the cloud," Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division, said in a news release.

Microsoft said it signed a number of new online services customers including Nokia (Helsinki:NOK1V.HE - News) and Danish shipping and oil group AP Moeller Maersk (Copenhagen:MAERSKB.CO - News).

The company's software suite is priced at $180 a year for each subscriber while rival Google Inc's (NasdaqGS:GOOG - News) competing product, Google Apps, which comes with e-mail, messaging and document sharing, costs around $50 a year per user.

Microsoft argues that its offerings are more advanced than Google Apps. Technology administrators can manage Microsoft Online Services' accounts in the same way it deals with accounts of users running on their own computer systems.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said it will share 18 percent of the subscription fees with companies that bring in new customers to the online service suite in the first year and 6 percent each year over the life of the contract.

By employing a revenue-sharing model, Microsoft said it can probably add more customers than it could alone and it could encourage other companies to build applications to work with its online services.

The company also introduced Deskless Worker Suite, which includes stripped-down online versions of its Outlook e-mail application and SharePoint collaboration software for $3 a month per user.

The software suite is targeted at workers such as nurses and factory employees who have traditionally not been given e-mail accounts or other forms of productivity software. By offering a low-cost product that can be accessed through a Web browser, Microsoft believes it can broaden its base of users.

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco; Editing by Derek Caney)

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Why text messaging may be on the way out

Don Reisinger,  Cnet News.com

I'm sure the very thought of text messaging entering the final stages in its life is a bit too much to fathom right now, considering Gartner believes 2 trillion messages will be sent this year and most analysts think text messaging will grow rapidly, but I'm not so quick to jump on the bandwagon.

The way I see it, more and more companies are realizing that the cell phone is an ideal place to feature chat applications and with popular devices like the iPhone leading that charge, I think text messaging growth will be stymied sooner than you think.

Just look at Google's latest announcement for all the proof you need. According to the company, it has officially released a new version of Google Talk for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which will allow you to send Gmail messages to friends without the need for any additional software or require to spend any cash to do it.

And it's that last component that could make all the difference in the world: it's free to use.

Let's face it -- text messaging prices are ridiculous. Can someone explain to me why I'm forced to pay around 20 cents per message for something so trivial? Of course, many people (especially those with kids) would rather spend money on the unlimited texting plan and be done with it, but it still isn't the ideal solution.

Instead, a service like Google Talk is. Granted, using Google Talk implies data charges and only those with the ability to get online will be able to use it, but I think this service is just the first step in a major movement that could change the way we interact with cell phones.

The way I see it, most people have proven that they would gladly interact with a cell phone keyboard, so that very critical issue is already set aside. And although text messaging is made available to everyone and anyone can interact with anyone else, the cost is the real sticking point.

If enough cell phones featured reliable and worthwhile chat applications that their friends actually used, I think the 2 trillion messages sent mark would be reduced by a significant margin and more people would be willing to use chat applications than text messaging.

But it's that level of engagement that matters most. Without one major leader in each market, chatting won't take off. Much like AIM in the US and MSN overseas, a dominating chatting application must emerge and have a large enough customer base that everyone's friends will be able to use it without the need for text messaging.

And although that may seem like a long way out, I'm not so sure that's true. Instead, I believe that Apple has transformed the cell phone industry and more cell phones will feature the kind of capabilities we've come to enjoy from smartphones. And as that happens, chat applications will become more ubiquitous as well. All the while, our reliance on text messaging as a communication medium will fall by the wayside.

Google Talk is just the first step in eroding text messaging use and creating an environment that's dictated by chatting applications and online interaction.

It may not happen overnight, but rest assured that text messaging won't be around for long and it may even be gone before you know it.

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Microsoft to offer Office by subscription

Wed Jul 2, 2008 2:00pm BST

SEATTLE, July 2 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) plans to introduce a new way to sell its Office software suite on Wednesday, offering customers a subscription model instead of the traditional one-time license fee.

Starting in mid-July, the company will offer U.S. consumers Microsoft Equipt, which comes packaged with the latest version of Office, Windows Live online services and security software.

Equipt, which was introduced under the code-name "Albany," will be available for $69.99 a year and it can be used on up to three home computers, according to Microsoft. The product will be available at around 700 Circuit City (CC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) stores.

By getting a subscription service, customers can get the latest updates and newest versions of the software. The regular price for a one-time license of Office 2007, home and student edition, is $149.99, according to Microsoft.

The company faces competition from Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and a slew of start-ups including privately-held Zoho, which are offering applications comparable to Office but delivered through a Web browser for free or a monthly subscription.

(Reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

As Intel Nears 40, Technologist Offers His Look Into Future

By DON CLARK, The Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO -- A top Intel Corp. technologist used the company's impending 40th anniversary as an opportunity to make four broad predictions about the future of the chip industry. Not surprisingly, he sees the company's products evolving rapidly and spreading into many new places.

Patrick Gelsinger, a senior vice president who has served as Intel's chief technology officer, told reporters at a briefing here to expect a sharp acceleration in the number of computing engines packed on each chip. While today's personal computers have chips with the core circuitry of one to four microprocessors, Intel is laying the groundwork for the "many core" era -- products featuring tens to hundreds of electronic brains.

That won't help with today's common computing jobs, like running word processors and spreadsheets, but Mr. Gelsinger predicted programmers will find many new ways to take advantage of the added processing power.

Medical images that take hours to process will become instantly available and interactive, speeding diagnoses, he said. Accurate speech recognition will replace typing input, and the basic interface software that controls the look and feel of computers will dramatically evolve to better interpret what users want. "It becomes immersive, intuitive and interactive," said Mr. Gelsinger, who is general manager of Intel's digital enterprise group.

As with some of Mr. Gelsinger's other predictions -- which amplify broad themes the company has sounded before -- there is a catch with many-core computing: It will require the development of new programming languages, tools and techniques, he said.

Another prediction is that the company's underlying chip design -- often called x86, but also labeled IA, for Intel architecture -- will push into cellphones, consumer products and other applications where it is not now commonplace. The biggest obstacles in cellphones include power consumption -- even Intel's latest Atom chip draws too much power -- and a stable of companies use an energy-efficient design from ARM Holdings PLC.

Intel's Atom chips are suited for ultra-small portable computers, and Mr. Gelsinger said the company is committed in the next version to target the cellphone market. The company's x86 technology also could bring huge software advantages, he said, as thousands of companies that make programs for PCs using the technology add products for handsets.

A third prediction concerns an even broader vision of ubiquity for Intel chips: that computing and Internet capability will become available to every person on the planet, 24 hours a day, Mr. Gelsinger said. That vision implies combinations of microprocessors, sensors and other devices that further enhance the capabilities of products such as automatic teller machines, cars and door locks. "You will be interacting with the computing experience without ever thinking of it."

A fourth prediction concerns Moore's Law, the oft-quoted prediction by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore about how the industry doubles the capabilities of chips every year or two. In particular, Intel is betting heavily that the industry will move to a new generation of the silicon wafers that serve as a substrate for chip manufacturing.

By moving to 450-millimeter wafers -- up from 300 millimeter wafers today -- the average cost of producing each chip can be driven down by 40%, Mr. Gelsinger noted. Assuming that happens, he predicted more chip makers that can't or don't want to put up the billions of dollars required to use 450-millimeter wafers will drop out of the industry.