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Virtual disease vs. real disease
In the popular PS3 game Resistance: Fall of Man the alien Chimera expand their number by infecting humans with a coma-inducing virus. In the real world, hundreds of thousands of PS3 gamers are using their machines to fight real brain-destroying Alzheimers and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, as well as cystic fibrosis and other diseases now thought to have protein-folding components.

The science
Protein folding is vital to understanding cell biology. DNA specifies long sequences of amino acids that form proteins. These proteins are used as enzymes to drive cell chemistry, antibodies in the immune system and as a major structural component in bones, muscles and skin. Once a protein sequence is assembled, the protein self-assembles itself by folding into its final shape.

Proteins fold quickly, some as fast as one-millionth of a second. Simulating the folding is much slower. The F@H site notes:

In fact, it takes about a day to simulate a nanosecond (1/1,000,000,000 of a second). Unfortunately, proteins fold on the tens of microsecond timescale (10,000 nanoseconds). Thus, it would take 10,000 CPU days to simulate folding — i.e. it would take 30 CPU years!

A non-trivial problem.

Got a PS3? It is easy to join F@H.

If you have PS3 system version 1.6 or later, you will see a Folding@Home icon in the Network column of the XMB (PS3 menu). Just click on the icon and that’s it. If you don’t have 1.6 or later, please perform a system upgrade.

The TFLOPS numbers are based on the software, not theoretical hardware numbers. The Stanford team has hand-tuned the codes for each platform.

Windows & Mac users: socially impaired losers?
Or uncaring brutes? Why choose, it could be both.

A word about the numbers. The Stanford team updates their statistics continually, so when you look you’ll see different numbers. I got these on Sunday:

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I was interested in the participation by platform, so I hunted around the web for some numbers, and found the Computer Industry Almanac Inc. estimate of 1 billion in 2007. Then I looked at Net Applications breakdown of operating system marketshare.

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The market share numbers for Linux and Mac are dodgy. The Mac numbers are about double what I’d imagined. The Windows numbers aren’t perfect either: lots of Windows machines are used for POS terminals and such so they shouldn’t be counted either. But the magnitudes are about right.

The Storage Bits take
It is traditional for the older generation to complain about the younger, but in this case baby boomers should be thanking gamers for their support of this important research.

Learn more about PS3s as supercomputers in Build an 8 PS3 supercomputer.

Andy Rubin, director of mobile platforms at Google, wrote in a post.

Despite all of the very interesting speculation over the last few months, we’re not announcing a Gphone. However, we think what we are announcing — the Open Handset Alliance and Android — is more significant and ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can’t imagine today.

Rubin’s post (Techmeme) covers most of the news that was already leaked. Also see winners and losers in this alliance and the revenue potential. The Android unveiling left more than a few lingering questions. Among them: Where are the big carriers? Is this just a PR move as Om Malik suggests? Can this alliance be managed?

In the meantime here are the key points, conference call highlights and my takeaways:

Key points:

* Android includes an open platform for mobile devices and includes an operating system, user interface and applications. It’s a mobile bundle “without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation,” wrote Rubin.

* The company also outlined its key partners in the Open Handset Alliance, which includes 34 companies. However, AT&T and Verizon Wireless aren’t in the alliance. Will this alliance need at least one of the big two domestic carriers?

* Android is expected to be platform agnostic. Rubin wrote: “Android will complement, but not replace, our longstanding mobile strategy of developing useful and compelling mobile services and driving adoption of these products through partnerships with handset manufacturers and mobile operators around the world.”

* A software developer kit will be available in the next week. Phones will be shipped in the second half of 2008 with Android software. Regarding this kit, the alliance had the following to say in a statement:

The Android platform will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Next week the Alliance will release an early access software development kit to provide developers with the tools necessary to create innovative and compelling applications for the platform.

Key points the conference call:

* Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the Open Handset Alliance will be bigger than the Gphone. The goal is cheaper handsets and a better Internet experience.
* René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, parent company of T-Mobile, said the plan is to launch a device based on Android “in the course of 2008.” “We see the opportunity to prevent a better than Internet experience on mobile devices,” said Obermann, who also talked up social networking and Web 2.0 possibilities. He didn’t discuss product plans. You have to wonder if this lineup can succeed with T-Mobile as the sole carrier.
* Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corp., said the first Android device will come in late 2008.
* Motorola CEO Ed Zander said the alliance is about open software and “seamless connected services.”
* Handset makers were asked whether they would continue to use other mobile operating system. Chou said Android is an opportunity to innovate more, but the commitment to other operating systems is the same. Zander said Android is an accelerator for open source development. He added that there is a commitment to other operating systems, but seemed to hint that Motorola was going down the open source path.
* Rubin said Google will advertise via a Web browser as it does today in the mobile space. Rubin said you won’t see a completely ad-driven handset “for quite some time.” Android will include a robust Web browser, said Rubin.
* Were Nokia, Apple, RIM and Microsoft asked to be in the alliance? Rubin said each company in the alliance contributed something. It’s open to people that want to join and contribute. Reading between the lines it sounds like those aforementioned parties didn’t want to contribute technology.
* How will new services be different than current Google offering? Schmidt said the big difference is that Google won’t have to “shoe horn” in an application because there will be a full featured Web browser on the phone in Android.
* Is Android a soft phone? Rubin said it’s premature to view Google’s effort as a soft phone.
* If there were to be a Google Phone, Android will be a fine platform to run it with. Of course, Google isn’t preannouncing anything. Sure sounds like Google isn’t ruling a Gphone out.
* Technical specifications due in a week with the SDK. Rubin did acknowledge that Android is Linux based.
* Schmidt was asked about the iPhone. He said that Android is designed to be used in new ways in the future on devices that haven’t been cooked up. “There will be different mobile experiences,” he said.
* How does Android differ from Symbian? Rubin said the big difference is that Android will be open source.
* Obermann said it’s far too early to forecast volume for the Android-based devices.
* Schmidt and Rubin were asked if Android devices could be locked down. Schmidt said it’s possible, but highly unlikely. Ultimately it’s the industry’s choice.
* Android architecture will run well on all data networks. Google’s interest in the 700 Mhz wireless auction is a separate issue.
* The role of carriers and the business model. Google said it wants to partner with handset makers and share in the profits. Obermann said there are additional opportunities for revenue for T-Mobile.

My takeaways:

* Android is betting big on its yet-to-be-seen Web browser to be the big difference maker.
* The Gphone will happen. Officials danced around the Gphone way too much. Android will be the basis of the Gphone should it launch.
* The technical specifications next week will give us a lot more color on this initiative.
* The wireless carrier business model isn’t going to go the way of the dinosaur over Android. That said, this alliance would do a lot better with Verizon Wireless on board.
* Social media is viewed as a big differentiator with this alliance. Schmidt said OpenSocial will run on Android, but the timing of both announcements was coincidental.
* It’s telling that Nokia, Symbian, Apple, RIM and Microsoft aren’t on board. Can this alliance succeed without these folks involved?

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web was overhyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions. Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage. The pretenders are given the bum’s rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other.

The concept of “Web 2.0″ began with a conference brainstorming session between O’Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O’Reilly VP, noted that far from having “crashed”, the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What’s more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as “Web 2.0″ might make sense? We agreed that it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born.

In the year and a half since, the term “Web 2.0″ has clearly taken hold, with more than 9.5 million citations in Google. But there’s still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means, with some people decrying it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new conventional wisdom.

This article is an attempt to clarify just what we mean by Web 2.0.

In our initial brainstorming, we formulated our sense of Web 2.0 by example:

The list went on and on. But what was it that made us identify one application or approach as “Web 1.0″ and another as “Web 2.0″? (The question is particularly urgent because the Web 2.0 meme has become so widespread that companies are now pasting it on as a marketing buzzword, with no real understanding of just what it means. The question is particularly difficult because many of those buzzword-addicted startups are definitely not Web 2.0, while some of the applications we identified as Web 2.0, like Napster and BitTorrent, are not even properly web applications!) We began trying to tease out the principles that are demonstrated in one way or another by the success stories of web 1.0 and by the most interesting of the new applications.

1. The Web As Platform

Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. You can visualize Web 2.0 as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core.

Figure 1 shows a “meme map” of Web 2.0 that was developed at a brainstorming session during FOO Camp, a conference at O’Reilly Media. It’s very much a work in progress, but shows the many ideas that radiate out from the Web 2.0 core.

For example, at the first Web 2.0 conference, in October 2004, John Battelle and I listed a preliminary set of principles in our opening talk. The first of those principles was “The web as platform.” Yet that was also a rallying cry of Web 1.0 darling Netscape, which went down in flames after a heated battle with Microsoft. What’s more, two of our initial Web 1.0 exemplars, DoubleClick and Akamai, were both pioneers in treating the web as a platform. People don’t often think of it as “web services”, but in fact, ad serving was the first widely deployed web service, and the first widely deployed “mashup” (to use another term that has gained currency of late). Every banner ad is served as a seamless cooperation between two websites, delivering an integrated page to a reader on yet another computer. Akamai also treats the network as the platform, and at a deeper level of the stack, building a transparent caching and content delivery network that eases bandwidth congestion.

Nonetheless, these pioneers provided useful contrasts because later entrants have taken their solution to the same problem even further, understanding something deeper about the nature of the new platform. Both DoubleClick and Akamai were Web 2.0 pioneers, yet we can also see how it’s possible to realize more of the possibilities by embracing additional Web 2.0 design patterns.

Let’s drill down for a moment into each of these three cases, teasing out some of the essential elements of difference.

Netscape vs. Google

If Netscape was the standard bearer for Web 1.0, Google is most certainly the standard bearer for Web 2.0, if only because their respective IPOs were defining events for each era. So let’s start with a comparison of these two companies and their positioning.

Netscape framed “the web as platform” in terms of the old software paradigm: their flagship product was the web browser, a desktop application, and their strategy was to use their dominance in the browser market to establish a market for high-priced server products. Control over standards for displaying content and applications in the browser would, in theory, give Netscape the kind of market power enjoyed by Microsoft in the PC market. Much like the “horseless carriage” framed the automobile as an extension of the familiar, Netscape promoted a “webtop” to replace the desktop, and planned to populate that webtop with information updates and applets pushed to the webtop by information providers who would purchase Netscape servers.

In the end, both web browsers and web servers turned out to be commodities, and value moved “up the stack” to services delivered over the web platform.

Google, by contrast, began its life as a native web application, never sold or packaged, but delivered as a service, with customers paying, directly or indirectly, for the use of that service. None of the trappings of the old software industry are present. No scheduled software releases, just continuous improvement. No licensing or sale, just usage. No porting to different platforms so that customers can run the software on their own equipment, just a massively scalable collection of commodity PCs running open source operating systems plus homegrown applications and utilities that no one outside the company ever gets to see.

At bottom, Google requires a competency that Netscape never needed: database management. Google isn’t just a collection of software tools, it’s a specialized database. Without the data, the tools are useless; without the software, the data is unmanageable. Software licensing and control over APIs–the lever of power in the previous era–is irrelevant because the software never need be distributed but only performed, and also because without the ability to collect and manage the data, the software is of little use. In fact, the value of the software is proportional to the scale and dynamism of the data it helps to manage.

Google’s service is not a server–though it is delivered by a massive collection of internet servers–nor a browser–though it is experienced by the user within the browser. Nor does its flagship search service even host the content that it enables users to find. Much like a phone call, which happens not just on the phones at either end of the call, but on the network in between, Google happens in the space between browser and search engine and destination content server, as an enabler or middleman between the user and his or her online experience.

While both Netscape and Google could be described as software companies, it’s clear that Netscape belonged to the same software world as Lotus, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and other companies that got their start in the 1980′s software revolution, while Google’s fellows are other internet applications like eBay, Amazon, Napster, and yes, DoubleClick and Akamai.

Siemens Medical is taking advantage of this with a contest called Win an MRI. Hospitals can send in videos through the end of November. Site visitors can choose their favorite through December 31.

The hospital with the most votes wins a MAGNETOM Essenza, a new 1.5 Tesla model it says is lighter, and uses less energy, than earlier MRIs. Publicity will help Siemens sell more units to large, urban hospitals that can afford it.

It’s clever marketing. Siemens is telling paying clients they can save $500,000 by buying the new gear. The company calls the new MRI ”the most affordable” ever.

But not for everyone.

As of today 41 hospitals have sent in videos. Some are heart-wrenching. My favorite is the one from Sumter County Regional Hospital,  in Americus, Georgia, which was destroyed by a tornado last year and faces a $13 million hole in its re-construction budget.

Most of the hospitals which have entered so far are in small towns. Cut-Off, Louisiana. Machias, Maine. Chamberlain, South Dakota. Keosauqua, Iowa.

I do have a fear that someone might “freep” this poll, that is, find a way to pile in a ton of votes at the last minute, corrupting the result. It’s the video entries which give me some hope, and the responsibility I’m sure Siemens Medical feels to get this right.

The rising cost of equipment has been pushing medical care into our largest cities for some time. This contest is a living testament to that fact. Given the costs, that trend is not all bad. We can’t afford to put every piece of equipment in every town if the equipment costs $1 million or more.

But how bad should it be — how far should someone have to travel for a scan?

Program Manager Steve Reynolds announced the news on October 4 on Microsoft’s IE Team blog:

“Because Microsoft takes its commitment to help protect the entire Windows ecosystem seriously, we’re updating the IE7 installation experience to make it available as broadly as possible to all Windows users. With today’s ‘Installation and Availability Update,’ Internet Explorer 7 installation will no longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation and will be available to all Windows XP users.”

WGA is the anti-piracy mechanism Microsoft uses to check whether users are running “genuine” Windows before allowing them to download certain product updates, fixes, white papers and other related information.

Microsoft posted to its Download Center on October 4 refreshed versions of IE 7 for Windows XP Service Pack (SP)2, Windows 64 client/server, and Windows Server 2003 SP1/SP2. It also posted an update to IE 7 for Windows XP that resolves a phishing-filter problem with the browser.

Users interested in downloading the refreshed IE can get it from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer home page or go thorugh a third-party site thatis authorized by Microsoft to deliver customized IE releases. Microsoft officials said they also have pushed the refresh out via Automatic Updates, but those already running IE 7 “will not be offered IE7 again” via this mechanism.

Other changes that are part of the IE 7 refresh:

* The menu bar is now visible by default
* The Internet Explorer 7 online tour has updated how-to’s and the “first-run” experience includes a new overview
* A new MSI installer that “simplifies deployment for IT administrators in enterprises,” according to the Softies

Microsoft rolled out IE 7 last fall. Since then, the company has said next-to-nothing about its future plans for its Web browser.

I was so sure at the time that if we could only get people to use this system we would surely stop spam.  Microsoft’s Bill Gates gave me some company in 2004 when he proclaimed that “spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time”.  As it turns out, we were both wrong and naive to say that we can stop spam because it’s like saying you can stop crime and the most we can ever hope for is to manage it to tolerable levels when there are determined adversaries who will do anything to get around any barrier you can put up.  I am coming clean on this now because there are still so people who believe that stopping spam is simple and that if it isn’t stopped, it’s must be the fault of the major ISPs and corporations for dragging their feet.

My colleague David Berlind blamed the spam problem on the big-four email vendors and declared rDNS (reverse DNS) and maybe SPF (Sender Policy Framework) the solution.  Now I’m certainly not trying to belittle David Berlind because his heart is definitely in the right place.  In fact, I’m essentially saying that Bill Gates and I were wrong to say that say that spam could be stopped and that it’s about time my colleague David Berlind takes a good hard look at the problem and stop implying that spam could be stopped if only we did XYZ.

The fundamental challenge here is that we’re will never stop spam because we will never go to the pure white-list model where we will only accept email from verified entities.  In fact there’s the little problem of human rights we have to deal with because words can get you imprisoned or executed in many countries.  I never gave much consideration to this issue in the past but I’ve given it some thought over the years and I’ve given in to the legitimate need for anonymous and decentralized email.

Why charging for email to stop spam is just plain dumb
One of the most commonly floated ideas for stopping email spam is that if only we charged a postage fee for every email ever sent, then the cost of spending spam would be so outrageous that it would deter spammers.  Not only will it not work, but there is the risk of abuse by some larger ISPs to charge users and legitimate companies for sending legitimate bulk email under the justification of stopping spam.  Why bother charging honest people for email when you can simply fine the bad apples and leave everyone else alone?For one thing, spammers don’t send the spam directly; they have their hijacked botnet armies send it for them.  These are personal computers (and some servers) that have been taken over with malicious software by criminal.  If anyone is going to pay, it will be the owners of those computers who pay.

The second most obvious thing that proponents of the email postage idea missed is that if you actually had such a massive billing scheme in place, it would have to have every sender registered with their credit card on file and every email ever sent had a digital signature that proves it was sent by the purported sender.  If this were the case, you would have already stopped spam without charging a dime for any emails because you can slap them with a massive fine if they ever dared send spam.  Why bother charging honest people for email when you can simply fine the bad apples and leave everyone else alone?

We left off with the display name change. OK, let’s log back into MySpace and start again. You type in your email address and password that you used to get started and that will take you to your friend, the home page.   Did you get acquainted with this page and explore around awhile? If not, take some time and do that now. Pay particular attention to the “edit profile” link and the boxes on the page. After you click the “edit profile”, a description of the boxes on that page follows.   The Headline space contains whatever you want to show just above your picture on your profile page. It will not be the same thing as on your home page. Remember, your home page is for your eyes only, but your profile is what your friends see. So feel free to type whatever you want here and change it as often as you wish to. Some, like myself, leave it the same all the time. I just type Wavecritter here so it is easy for all to know my username. Some, like to change it every week or so, depending on their mood. It is entirely up to you. When you start venturing out and making friends, you will see what others do. I recommend making one change in one box at a time. After you add the type for Headline, click save all changes. You will then see a red typed “profile updated” above the save all changes button.   Before we get into the other boxes, starting with the “About Me” section, I think we ought to cover the other type click areas along the horizontal line of the ”interests and personality” link. The one next to the “interests and personality” is “Name”, this one we covered last time, then, there is “Basic Info”, let’s click there now. Most of this is already filled out for you, but if you want, you can choose to type in your occupation, your ethnicity, your body type, height (if you fill this is be sure to unclick the little no answer box under height), and what you are here for, I click friends and networking. Then click “save changes”. Again, you should see the red type “profile updated above gender.   On to “background and lifestyle”, here you have options for marital status, sexual orientation, hometown, religion, whether you smoke or drink, if you have children, your education, and income. Feel free to leave any of these as “no answer”. The only one that you will need to choose is the marital status, this is set to single as a default choice. Under “income” click “save changes” and once again you will see the red “profile updated”. It’s getting kind of easy now, isn’t it? That is good, getting your comfort level higher, raising the bar.   Next is adding your schools, company you work for or wish to promote, and then “song and video on profile”. Let’s go over this one next, I am certain that you can handle the other two solo.   This link is fairly self explanatory as well, but I will walk you through a bit. First, decide if you want a song to play on your view profile page. If so, click on “find a band in MySpace music”, (you can still see the home page link, you can always go back home and start over), the search artists box is where you will type in the artist or song title you are wanting to put on your site. After you type it in, click search. Don’t stress over a song title or band name if you can’t think of any because the next page you can just choose a type of music to search. Like Rock, Pop, Country, Hawaiian, or Jazz and many more. While you look around, remember that you can click on the blue type names of the bands and then go right back by clicking your back arrow button located by the address bar way up in your browser window. Also, there is a search criteria box on the right where you can change what music you are viewing. This is also a great way to make some celebrity friend while you choose your music. When you click on an artist name in blue type, you then go to their profile page. Find the “add friend” link under their picture or close by, click that, click confirm add, then it will say “an email has been sent to add this user. You then have the option to view the artist profile again, click the back button until you get back where you want, go home and start over, or go back and add a video.   When you do find a song that you would like to add that is on a player box, look next to the song on the right, there will be an “add” click. Click it, and a page with a box saying “Do you really want to add this song to your profile?” will show. Click yes, and it will say that the song has been added to your profile. You can now either go back to the artist’s profile or go home.   Back at the home page click edit page again, and song and video on profile. This is all starting to come natural, isn’t it? Now, the same process for a video, if you want to look for one. Although, when you get into the Myspace TV section, the home link is all the way at the top more toward the right side. It says MySpace Home. The link to add the video is directly under the playing video as you choose to view them, not in the long list of potential viewable videos. Then return to your home page.   Now, we will explore your account settings link just below the edit profile next to your picture. We already covered the time settings. The next link is your password. If you ever want to change your password, click here and fill in the boxes for current, new, verify (just retype your new password here) for passwords, then type in the letters from the safety box and click save changes. The privacy link is for your general privacy settings, here you can choose to show others your birthday, when you are online, profile viewable or not by everyone, photos, or you can choose to block a user here. The spam link is for more specific privacy settings. Read through the list and check or uncheck the “x boxes” and then save changes. Remember that whatever you do can be changed if you redo the step and click save changes. The notifications link is for e-mail and newsletter notifications. You choose whether or not you wish to receive these here, then click save changes. The mobile and calendar links work just the same way.   The miscellaneous tab has settings for your music to start automatically or not, your profile settings for HTML comments (the cool pictures that people like to post), and if you are going to be away from MySpace for a time to set a message for your friends.   Now, back to the home page and I will point out some important areas here. Just below your friends area will be a view birthdays. People love to get birthday wishes and this link will take you right to the friends having birthdays soon so you can click on their picture, view their profile, and add a comment to their profile page.   View your own profile at this time, the link to do that is directly under your picture, it will say view profile, pics, videos, blog, comments, friends, groups and get used to the layout. The message, add friend, view friends, add comment, subscribe to blog, and bulletins.   The difference between a message and a comment is that the message is private to your friend, and the comment goes directly on the profile page for everyone to see. Now, your blog listings do not get sent to anyone except people who subscribe to them. And the only way they can see them is to go to your profile page and click on your blog listings. The bulletin post section is for you to be able to post one comment for all of your friends at the same time, listed in their bulletin sections on their home page, not their profile page.   So, to view another persons profile, you click on their picture, and you will be taken to their profile page. From here you can add them as a friend or interact with them in other ways. The search and invite links will help you find friends, I am teaching you how to fluff your page, so I won’t get into that. I am certain, once we are finished, you will be navigating like a pro.   The biggest and fluffiest part is yet to come. So, again, play around and get comfortable with the view of the boxes on your edit profile page, because part three will make your space shine.   Stephanie Haile AKA Wavecritter

Watching Microsoft deal with open source’s popularity kind of mirrors the Five Steps of Grief, normally applied when someone faces a terrible loss. Those steps are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

We saw all of the stages initially: Microsoft blew off open source efforts; executives got mad and called it names; we had sites like “Get the Facts,” which seemed to be a way to bargain out; depression was likely behind the lack of execution and some of the commentary in unauthorized internal Microsoft blog entries; and now Microsoft has reached acceptance, putting its lead open source guy in charge of server strategy.

We’ve already seen Redmond aggressively partner with open source companies and Novell, and despite a lot of speculation to the contrary, for the first time in the decade or so I’ve covered it actually may have a strong future as a result. That’s saying a lot, as I’ve generally believed Novell’s sustaining strategy was to make sure the next CEO is the one to finally turn out the lights.

What This Could Mean for Microsoft and Microsoft Customers …

Unless he changes, Bill Hilf is a straight shooter, which is a somewhat unusual skill in technology marketing and in Microsoft marketing in particular. I think it will be incredibly refreshing to have someone like this on the messaging side as, for some time, I’ve felt Microsoft was out of control with regard to media spin. Few outside Microsoft actually believed much of it. This appeared true whether or not what Microsoft was saying was accurate and, I think, it had a lot to do with how few people trust the company today.

Rebuilding trust will be difficult, but it is substantially helped by the fact that Windows 2008 Server is not Windows Vista and represents one of the biggest surprises in the industry today. I mean if, 10 years ago, I would have said that Microsoft’s next generation enterprise server was vastly more popular than its next generation enterprise desktop, folks would have likely laughed me out of the business. Yet, with companies in early beta deployment, that appears to be exactly the case as, even though Vista is almost a year old, it isn’t getting the same aggressive attention.

Now it would be nice if both platforms got the same level of interest, and Vista SP1 may help out there, but Bill isn’t on the desktop team — he is pushing servers. But, if he can hold to being candid and straight, which he generally has been on Port 25, I think the practice could permeate through Microsoft and make it into a better company.

Death of Microsoft vs. Recovery

Let’s be clear: I think those that commonly predict that Microsoft will die are fools. Microsoft is actually growing at a reasonable (14 pace) pace. Granted others are growing faster by gaming open source, but growing is not going out of business (though you could certainly argue Microsoft’s market valuation could use some help).

Given that negative rate of revenue decline, Microsoft will cease being a company about the same time the sun stops burning. Detractors said the same thing about IBM, when it was in actual decline, and decades later IBM may no longer be dominant but it remains one of the most powerful companies in the world — and probably the biggest Open Source supporter, which I find incredibly ironic.

Changing a company is tough, and my experience has been that it generally requires someone with enough authority and board support, and the global realization that the firm has serious problems, to get the job done. At HP, you can see this outcome of when this process actually works, and we’ve seen it go the other way a number of times.

Microsoft is showing strong signs of moderating and the people who made most of the questionable decisions I’m aware of in the last decade have moved on from the company. I’m thinking that a number of them likely aren’t being missed right now. However, it is tough to change practices, and one new body in a critical role does not a new company make.

I’m a believer in fixing a company first, if it can be done, because taking a company out is not only impractical — the collateral damage that happens as the company fails is unbelievably painful. However, a lot of us constantly wonder if Microsoft’s other executives, and one in particular, will ever really step up to the plate. Bungie was another good example (Halo 3) of how things should be, but often aren’t, at Microsoft.

Wrapping Up: Microsoft vs. Open Source

What I find interesting is that Microsoft seems to be honestly trying to move towards open source, both with staffing and investment, yet open source with initiatives like the new GPL 3.0 seem to be moving even farther away from where Microsoft (and many developers) currently are. It is almost as if Microsoft has grasped that open source isn’t going away and that it will have to work with it. Some of the more rabid open source folks are still caught between the first two grief stages, denial and anger.

Personally, I think a lot of folks will be happier with both sides if the current trend of cooperation accelerates. This is because neither is going away any time soon, and most of us just want everyone to work together so we can keep this mess of IT technologies working and have at least one weekend a month free to see if we are still married.

So, assuming Bill can stay true to his ideals (not the easiest thing to do when you move up in any large company), the end result should be both positive for us and Microsoft. This year I’ll go for any win/win I can get.

If there was a GSM version I would probably pick one up at that price to add a newer Palm OS device to my collection. The press release states the Centro will be exclusive with Sprint for only 90 days. The Centro is available for pre-order and I am not sure when it will actually be available.

The lack of IMAP has been especially bothersome for me the last 3 months on the Apple iPhone and I can’t wait for my account to be provisioned with IMAP access. According to the Download Squad article IMAP seems to be rolling out to users and unfortunately, I don’t yet have this functionality. I’ll definitely be reevaluating my needs for multiple email services and hosted Exchange (syncing my calendar and contacts is still valuable, but again may be handled by Google too) services. Is anyone else as excited about this news as I am?