According to multiple sources close to the situation, Groupon plans to conduct its road show for investors next week, starting either on Monday or Tuesday.

While the decision to move forward could still change, it comes amid continued criticism of the Chicago-based daily deals company, which has had one of the rougher IPO processes for an Internet company in recent memory.

Just yesterday, the New York Times took aim at Groupon and its Wall Street bankers, retreading over the same list of issues, including controversial accounting, a too-large payout to its founders and issues around its marketing costs.

In addition, the social buying service has had some management turnover, with two COOs departing.

Lastly, it has amended its S-1 filing several times, for a variety of reasons, including an email to employees by its CEO Andrew Mason that struck regulatory agencies as a bit blabby.

That said, the initiation of the road show — where company execs will pitch its business to possible shareholders — might be an indication that Groupon’s results have improved in its recent quarter.

In the last quarter, the company lost $102.7 million on revenue of $878 million.

Also of concern is the stock market itself. Groupon, like several Web IPO candidates, had delayed its offering due to turbulent conditions.

Now, sources said, the company will go public on the Nasdaq exchange soon after the road show is complete and after pricing by its bankers.

That valuation will also be under scrutiny. Some had previously estimated that Groupon would have an IPO of up to $25 billion. Now it could be half that, sources said.

Well, we will presumably soon see, as Groupon plans to proceed.

Earlier today, well-known digerati dude Robert Scoble posted on his social feed on Google+ that the search giant was working on a social and news reader.

“I heard from someone working with Google that Google is working on a Flipboard competitor for both Android and iPad,” posted Scoble. “My source says that the versions he’s seen so far are mind-blowing good.”

If blowing the minds of hot Silicon Valley start-up Flipboard and Facebook is the goal, then Scooby-Don’t's rumor is pretty spot-on.

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Google is indeed working on rolling out the new product, which is currently called Propeller.

Sources said Propeller is apparently one of a number of new socially focused announcements Google is prepping, including new apps. But the timing for their launch is unclear.

Here’s what is: Propeller is a souped-up version of similar reader apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Yahoo’s Livestand, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

Facebook is also making social versions of publications available within its site. So, instead of just seeing a sidebar on a news site of what stories your friends liked, you’ll get a personalized and reformatted version of the latest news when you visit that publication’s page within Facebook.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping them better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies.

Flipboard is the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, available only on the Apple iPad. The company is working on an iPhone version, too.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

Propeller is probably a better name, I will admit.

It’s not clear what Google’s Propeller will include in the product, such as Facebook integration, since the pair of Silicon Valley behemoths have not been able to partner over data exchange.

Which is an understatement, I know.

But sources said it would be available on both Apple’s iPad and Google’s Android tablets.

In any case, stay tuned and thanks to Scoobs for the tip!

[Photo credit: This Noogler Propeller Hat -- which is given to all new Googlers -- is in the collection at the Computer History Museum, the gift of Marcin Wichary; the image is by Mark Richards.]

MicroHoo is funky!

At least according to Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on the Silicon Valley search giant’s first-quarter earnings conference call about its recent financial performance.

Yahoo’s results showed a continued worrisome revenue growth stall, due in large part to a search advertising fall-off, and a still-turning turnaround.

Yahoo reported revenues of $1.06 billion, down six percent from a year ago, on net earnings of 17 cents a share, down 28 percent.

The results were essentially in line with Wall Street expectations.

2:03 pm PT: The call started right on time, as per usual. Maybe they can’t get search right anymore, but Yahoo execs sure know how to start an analysts’ confab.

Bartz started off the call, noting “overall, our turnaround is proceeding on schedule.”

Well, the schedule of a three-toed sloth, I suppose, but it’s on schedule!

Bartz is too smart, though, and quickly noted the problems with search revenue declines, related to its search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft.

Still, she then used the unusual term “funky comparisons” to dismiss the key issue.

But isn’t she the one who struck the funky deal with Microsoft that has resulted in these funky comparisons and these even funkier search advertising revenues?

Just askin’!

Bartz proceeded quickly to noting Yahoo’s advances due to technology improvements, which showed a doubling of impressions to big events such as the Super Bowl and the Oscars.

It’s a good point, since Yahoo–for all its troubles–is still a huge traffic driver, including serving up 1.3 billion page views for the Oscars.

Bartz talked about monetization and said a lot of other stuff, but got to the finances quickly.

“Search was a mixed bag,” she said flatly. You can say that again–but not in a good way.

Bartz tried to put a good-news spin on it, but had to admit that “on the downside [Microsoft's] adCenter is not seeing strong RPS,” she said.

That’s revenue per search and a key number that Yahoo had thought would be better by now.

Bartz noted that the paid search markets internationally will be delayed until MicroHoo gets its act together.

Good idea!

2:16 pm: CFO Tim Morse took over to go through the numbers.

“We had good display momentum around the globe,” he said.

But search was, um, bad. It underperformed, but Yahoo had that guarantee from Microsoft to pay out, which Morse called a “financial floor.”

Morse pretty much read the press release from here on out.

2:24 pm: Bartz was back talking up the huge audience Yahoo has abroad. And it is true–the Yahoo brand is a golden one globally.

Also video consumption is up too, as it is across the Web, in terms of views and time spent. Yahoo’s “Primetime in No Time” got 500 million streams in the quarter.

Bartz turned to mobile, which is weak no matter what she said about the laudable Livestand. It’s one of many in a very competitive market.

Same for social, which Yahoo has essentially abdicated to Facebook. That said, Yahoo has tried to weave social within its myriad of sites and it gets it, especially compared to the socially awkward Google.

Bartz summed up that she hoped everyone gets that profitability and revenue growth were on track to get better, promising more at the investor day in May.

2:30 pm: Q&A time!

The first question is about display growth. It’s a softball, since display was up.

The next is about other revenue growth areas to come.

Bartz–who seemed not so prepped for such an obvious question–ticked off shopping, travel and uuuuuh….

Morse jumped in and talked about making internal connections, which I also did not understand.

An analyst then wanted to “dig into” search problems. I’d say it’s time to call in Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel!

Relative to RPS, Bartz acknowledged it was low and everyone was studying the issue. There is a plan, apparently. Again, Bartz was maddeningly vague.

I missed the next question and then it was back to search.

Bartz was not getting too specific about search, but would say video advertising was going to do well.

She did note that Yahoo expected a dip in Q1 related to search revenue, “but the dip went a little lower than we expected and lasted a little longer than expected.”

Bartz said she had recently sat down with Microsoft execs to go over the problems. How much would I have liked to have been a fly on that wall!

The next question was about video and it turns out Bartz loves the babbling babies too! I knew we had something cool in common.

The next question is about Japan and the possible deal to sell off Yahoo’s ownership of Yahoo Japan!

Morse said diddly, except “we continue to make progress.”

A question about display and possible content verticals.

Verticals Yahoo is interested in, according to Bartz: Entertainment, lifestyle, women, gossip.

“The things people really want to do, they want to disappear,” said Bartz, which was an interesting way of putting it.

Yet another question in what was beginning to feel like an endless call.

It was about Right Media, Yahoo’s advertising exchange. Cleaning it up, etc.

The next question is about communications, as in email.

Bartz even sounded bored and messed up a few words. “I’ve had too many Diet Cokes,” she joked.

Personally, I am considering disappearing into some content, since there is yet another question.

It’s–no surprise–an RPS question!

Funky!

Search guarantee payments from Microsoft are in place for another four quarters. Thank goodness.

Bartz got more detailed about the problems. There is some kind of prediction issue, which she said Microsoft is working on.

Now a local advertising question and its relationship with Facebook.

Bartz grabbed this one by the horns, noting you don’t have to run to the social networking powerhouse to get you a social ad!

It’s about branding with a social component. Which would be, um, Facebook, which was part of Yahoo’s Chrysler campaign referenced by Bartz.

A question about daily deals.

It’s growing, but more at Groupon and LivingSocial, which Morse does not mention.

Finally, the last question.

Another gigantic softball on engagement and Yahoo’s new content platform and some mobile deets query about whether Yahoo can make it there.

Bartz said she was working on it. As to content, Bartz said stats show big lifts.

“The good news is that it’s all in the right direction,” she said.

Up would certainly be good.

The difference: Instead of running the exchange itself, as Google does, Redmond is going to outsource the work.

In February, ad tech start-up AppNexus will begin selling Microsoft’s “non-premium” display ads via its own exchange. And Microsoft will essentially pull the plug on AdECN, the exchange it bought in 2007 but only began testing a year ago.

If you’re not remotely interested in advertising technology, here’s the takeaway: Lots of smart people predict that display advertising will be moving to “real time bidding,” which allows buyers and sellers to set the price of a single ad impression in milliseconds.

That efficiency makes plenty of sense from a buyer’s perspective, but it will inevitably chip away at publishers’ pricing power–which is one reason big sellers like Microsoft haven’t embraced it yet.

Microsoft sort of announced the move last October, when it participated in a $50 million investment in AppNexus. Microsoft and AppNexus have been deliberately playing down the move, for reasons I can’t quite fathom–it’s not as if players like Google haven’t picked up on it.

(And that Microsoft-AppNexus connection may or may not have had something to do with a falling-out between AppNexus and Google last year.)

In any case, it’s now formalized: Microsoft will throw all of its unsold inventory into an exchange that AppNexus will power, starting with ad space on Windows Live Hotmail. Then it will add in all of the inventory on MSN properties, and eventually ads from third-party publishers that Microsoft is working with, like Viacom.

Which doesn’t mean Google will be quaking in its boots.

At the start, AppNexus figures it will be moving more than 10 billion ad impressions a month through the exchange, which sounds like a lot. And it is! But Google’s AdX is many times larger–it’s a safe bet that it’s doing more than one billion impressions a day, and likely much more.

Still, Google’s giant lead isn’t necessarily insurmountable. For starters, the universe of display advertising is much more fragmented than search. So no matter how much inventory AdX picks up, there’s always going to be lots of ad space that Google doesn’t get its hands on.

And because Google’s so big, there’s a very deliberate effort by lots of buyers and sellers to make sure they have other options. So underdog Microsoft–I can’t get over how odd it is to type that–will get at least a look-see for quite some time.

Microsoft on Thursday reported earnings and revenue that topped expectations and rose significantly from a year ago amid strong sales from its Xbox unit.

For the three months ended Dec. 31, Microsoft earned $6.63 billion, or 77 cents per share, on revenue of $19.95 billion. The per-share number is up from 74 cents a year ago and ahead of the analysts’ average prediction of about 68 cents per share.

“We are enthusiastic about the consumer response to our holiday lineup of products, including the launch of Kinect,” CFO Peter Klein said in a statement. “The 8 million units of Kinect sensors sold in just 60 days far exceeded our expectations,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “The pace of business spending, combined with strong consumer demand, led to another quarter of operating margin expansion and solid earnings per share growth.”

Not only were the results ahead of estimates financially–they were also ahead of estimates chronologically, as the company accidentally released the information before the end of regular trading on Thursday. Results were expected to be released after the closing bell.

“A preproduction draft of our earnings release was discovered by one or more media sources who then published our results to the web before market close,” Microsoft said in a statement. “After consulting with NASDAQ, we have posted our official numbers. We apologize for any confusion and will review our procedures to ensure this does not happen again.”

With the results from the past quarter, Apple passed Microsoft slightly in quarterly revenue, but did not–as some analysts thought might happen–surpass Redmond in profits as well. The company also noted it bought back $5 billion in shares during the quarter and handed out $1.3 billion in dividends to shareholders.

The gaming unit wasn’t the only part of Microsoft going strong. Redmond said its Office unit also had a big quarter, growing 24 percent from a year earlier, and that Windows 7 license sales have now passed 300 million.

“Business demand for our productivity and infrastructure products and cloud solutions is strong,” COO Kevin Turner said in a statement. “Office had a huge quarter, exceeding everyone’s expectations, and our roadmap for cloud productivity with Office 365 makes products like SharePoint, Exchange, Lync and Dynamics CRM even more attractive to our customers.”

The company noted in a PowerPoint presentation accompanying its results that nine out of 10 businesses have now started their formal migration to Windows 7. Turner also pointed to Microsoft’s longer-term move to bring Windows to ARM-based processors.

“Windows 7 continues to be the fastest-growing operating system in history, and our recent system-on-a-chip announcement demonstrates our commitment that Windows will have the power and flexibility to run everywhere and on every device,” he said.

The company also said its online advertising sales were up 23 percent during the quarter.

However, Microsoft’s outlook was limited, offering guidance only for what it expects its operating expenses to be. In the PowerPoint, Microsoft offered a bit more information, detailing its unit-by-unit expectations relative to their markets. For example, the company said that Windows growth should roughly track the PC market, adjusting for some boost the company got a year ago from the launch of Windows 7. Server sales should also track the hardware market, with long-term licensing and services revenue growing in the high single digits for the current quarter and low double digits for the full fiscal year, which runs through the end of June. The company said the entertainment unit should enjoy year-over-year revenue growth of 50 percent for the current quarter and 40 percent for the full fiscal year.

Here’s a full look at the company’s segment-by-segment results (click to enlarge):

The headliner was VNXe, its first low-end offering, priced at less than $10,000 and aimed at small and medium businesses, a segment where Dell used to resell EMC equipment. In another bit of product-launch theater, EMC had a fourth-grade boy onstage to demonstrate that the box–which in this case was mounted on the back of another Mini Cooper–could be managed and configured from an iPad.

I caught up with EMC Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Burton to talk about it and the 40 other products EMC launched yesterday.

NewEnterprise: So 41 products all at once?

Burton: I’ve never been in a situation where the release dates of so many products aligned. We realized we might as well do them all at the beginning of the year. Internally we called it the “mega-launch.”

What kind of opportunities do you see in that lower-end market. This was your first entry into that market.

We estimate maybe a $4 billion opportunity there. We don’t have much of it now, call it zero. We’ve never really built a product that’s tailor made for that market. And for a product like that, you can’t just build it–you have to build it in a way that the channel can make money on and create customer satisfaction. We’ve got several partners who will take this product to market. We’ve committed $20 million there to generate demand and bootstrap the whole thing.

Tell me about this go-to-market effort.

Traditionally EMC has been led by direct sales. We have a sales force and they call on the customer directly. With a products that sells for $9,000 or $10,000 you can’t afford to sell that in the same way. We have to create pull for the product with our partners. You have to get the customers calling to ask for the product. It’s a little bit of everything. There’s advertising, there’s direct campaigns. Anything to get the phones to ring. To get the reps at the events jazzed up we’ve leased a fleet of 21 Mini Coopers. We’ll be doing 108 partner events around the world.

So who do you see as a typical customer for this?

Before I worked for EMC I ran a software company that had about 700 or 800 people. We had about 20 guys in the IT department. We didn’t have a lot of specialists, we had a lot of generalists there. So I’d say any company that’s at less than $25 million in annual sales is a perfect candidate. They’re not going to have the high-end skills to deal with the complexity of the high-end arrays. But they’ll have VMWare, they’ll have exchange environments, they have file shares, and they’ll want to get going quickly.

It’s funny I should be talking to you today. I just published a Q&A with Ping Li of Accel Partners. We got to talking about the storage needs of companies moving to the cloud, particularly around their database environments, and he said the trend is toward running open-source things like Hadoop on commodity hardware. He said he’s not seeing a lot of EMC gear at Google or Facebook or many of the other Web companies. There’s a lot of people who are seeing both a trend and an opportunity around that. What do you see?

If you’re Google and you’ve got your own team of rocket scientists who can build your own file system and kernel and download modules from the Internet every day, you don’t need it. But if you’re Pfizer, you probably have a lot of rocket scientists, but you probably don’t want them working on reconfiguring kernels, you probably want them working on discovering new drugs. And so, picking the techiest of the tech companies and saying they don’t use our stuff, yeah those are companies with the smartest tech guys on the planet. The problem is they’re not in all the Fortune 500 companies in the world, and in fact I’d argue they’re in almost none of them.

So if you want to have that scaled-out commodity storage and you want to manage big data, and you don’t want to hire 1,000 rocket scientists to do it, we can sell it to you. It won’t be true commodity hardware, but then you won’t have to hire so many people to manage it. That to me is kind of the rub. EBay is a big name on the Web, and it uses our Object Storage infrastructure. Could they have built it themselves? Probably. But there’s a little intellectual snobbery inside these companies. They say, “We don’t want to buy your stuff because we’re smarter than you.” Those are the edge cases. If we just get the rest we’re happy.

Let’s talk about the broader picture in IT spending. What are you hearing from your largest customers about their intent to spend this year?

2010 was a decent year. Going into 2010 folks said they thought their spending would increase two to three percent. They probably ended up with three to four percent. Looking out into this year, people seem a little more optimistic. But even still I think it’s in the three to five percent range. One thing we saw in 2009 is that folks didn’t buy much storage capacity last year and instead tried to use what they had. Going into 2010 there were signs of recovery and people started to spend again, and we see that continuing into 2011. One reason for the Isilon acquisition is that we do see a trend toward spending into different areas of the business.

At another level I think I agree with you and with Ping that certain companies will move to Hadoop for a certain class of application and we’ve got a pretty strong relationship between our Greenplum division and Hadoop. What a lot of people want to do is analyze traditional enterprise data in conjunction with something else. What Greenplum has tried to do is bridge the gap between Hadoop and the more traditional storage infrastructure. Hadoop is not going away, and its something that we fully intend to work with.

Over time, CIOs everywhere got over their skepticism of the cloud, and Salesforce.com went on to become a billion-dollar company that is widely used in numerous industries.

But he knew there was more to it. Lots of other small companies where adapting the Salesforce software-as-a-service model to other job functions besides tracking sales relationships. There’s SuccessFactors, which tracks employee performance, and Workday, which manages basic company operations like payroll and benefits.

For companies large and small that are embracing the cloud, that’s a lot to manage. McKinnon’s plan with Okta, a start-up company that’s received investments from Andreessen Horowitz, Floodgate and SV Angel, is to make it easy for companies to take advantage of cloud applications and services by giving them a single place from which to manage it all.

I caught up with McKinnon last week in Menlo Park, Calif., at the Sand Hill Road offices of Andreessen Horowtiz, which in July invested $10 million in Okta, its first cloud investment. The company is planning a big launch in January.

NewEnterprise: So your last job was at Salesforce.com, but it led directly to you starting Okta. Tell me about that.

Todd McKinnon: I went to Salesforce at the time their engineering team was really small. Their engineering team was only about 10 or 15 people. They brought me in to be the first non-founder VP of engineering. They wanted me to scale the company and scale the group.

NE: So you got into Salesforce early, and things look pretty good over there now. Why did you leave?

TM: We had a booth at Dreamforce, and I saw a lot of my old friends there, and they asked me the same thing. I was at the tip of the spear in terms of seeing this transition in the industry. When I first started at Salesforce, companies were first starting to adopt the cloud and the software-as-service approach, but they were really skeptical. They had to scrutinize everything about it before they would buy it. One time I spent an entire weekend–I remember because it was my birthday–reviewing the code line by line with a big bank, for security. Over the years, that attitude changed. Rather than view it as something risky, they viewed it as beneficial, and they got more comfortable with the risk.

That to me was an important moment. When the industry shifts, that creates an opportunity, the kind of opportunity that small companies can take advantage of. I couldn’t sit there knowing there was so much opportunity and so much disruption going on and watch someone else go out and do it.

NE: Clearly we’re seeing Salesforce broadening out from its original offering. We’ve seen it launch Database.com and acquire Heroku in recent days. It didn’t occur to you to try and build this within Salesforce?

TM: It did. But there’s challenges there in terms of what the company is going to focus on and how long to focus on the primary mission before it branches out. I wanted to build a company. I wanted to have an impact, but I also wanted to build a company.

NE: So explain how you got from there to starting Okta.

TM: I had been thinking about building a monitoring system for big companies rolling out their mission-critical cloud services, like call centers. The idea was to monitor performance and gather compliance data in a way that was similar to what companies were already doing with the systems they had in-house.

I called a bunch of people who said that monitoring was a good idea. But one thing I heard was that it would only make sense to large companies. The other thing was that there were a lot of companies, some big, some small, that were deploying cloud applications. I started to see companies who were running most of their IT infrastructure outside the firewall. Once you think about a world where the center of gravity is outside the firewall you have to solve a lot of problems in the cloud that have already been solved inside the firewall.

I kept running into a simple example: If you have a Windows network, you have file servers and print servers and email. Microsoft has made that work well. But if you’re trying to build your corporate IT in the cloud, there’s a bunch of unsolved problems. You have some file utility, and email from Google or a hosted Microsoft Exchange, and maybe a print driver on your copy machine. What I learned is, before anyone needs monitoring, there were all these basic problems that needed solving.

NE: What kind of basic problems?

TM: There’s the the most basic problem of identity. How do you get users authenticated in a consistent way across all these cloud services? How do I make sure that when someone joins the company they get access to what they need to do their job? And more importantly when someone leaves the company, how do I make sure that they don’t have access to all the things they did when they were an employee?

When you run your corporate IT in the cloud, all your files and services are out there on the Internet and so you have to make sure you de-provision that user’s access. There’s a great bonus with the cloud that files are accessible from everywhere, on your PC or your phone. The downside is that they’re available everywhere and so you have to manage that. If you’re truly going to reap all the benefits of the cloud, like lower costs, in the next five to 10 years, companies are going to have to rethink how they build their networks.

NE: And that’s where Okta comes in?

TM: Right. We set out to build a domain controller for this new type of network–we call it a Cloud Area Network.

NE: At most companies there’s a mixture of infrastructure that’s in the building or in a managed data center, mixed with some cloud services. What you’re saying is that if I want to manage my infrastructure on things like Amazon Cloud Services or Microsoft Azure or Google Apps, some combination like that, then you’ve got to have a way to control who can access what.

TM: Exactly. Okta sits in the middle of your services, and knows what you use. Right now it’s focused on applications: Workday, Taleo, Success Factors, GoToMeeting, Salesforce. We have hundreds of prepackaged combinations. You tell it which ones you have, and you get three very concrete benefits right out of the box. The first is that your users get a single dashboard to access them all, with a single sign-on. Administration staff gets a single point to create accounts across all of your services. And then, most importantly, when someone leaves you can automatically de-provision them, so you can cut them off from the services all at once.

NE: So what are your launch plans?

TM: We’ve been selling in the marketplace for a while now, and the main thing we’re going to talk about is customers.

NE: That was my next question. What kind of companies are you going to be talking about?

TM: These are known companies. They’re not huge. Our biggest installation is about 1,500 seats. But when companies deploy it they want to give it to every employee because it manages so many applications. One customer has 21 applications in there, and one had 15. It crosses all the job functions, and touches all employees.

NE: So if you counted up all the active seats in use right now, how many would it be?

TM: We’re going to be announcing that in January too! (Laughs.)

NE: So what’s the business model?

TM: It’s a subscription model just like all the other software-as-service companies out there. It’s based on per user, per month. The default is that they choose to license for the whole company so we get a lot of broad deployments.

NE: So where do you want to be a year from now?

TM: The big thing a year from now, we need to start to position ourselves toward our bigger vision of becoming a platform. The initial product is easy to understand. Over time we need to turn it into something bigger. We want to get beyond the applications and turn it into a platform-as-service. We’re starting with applications, because that’s where the adoption is right now. Ultimately we want to be the controlling layer for a lot more: Programming tools like Heroku and Force.com and Google App Engine, and then there’s the infrastructure-as-service layer like Amazon. Our ambition is to be a domain controller for all of it.

But just wait until the office mail server goes down. Take away access to email, and it’s not uncommon for business to essentially stop for the few hours it takes to get the server back up. This is why many companies pay for email continuity services that take over when a corporate email server goes on the blink.

Google is jumping into that business with some additions to its Postini service for businesses, which it will announce today. The new service will be called Google Message Continuity, and it’s being aimed squarely at users of Microsoft’s Exchange 2003 and 2007. Messages, contacts, folders, calendars and other aspects of the corporate email environment are replicated within Gmail, constantly updated and synched so that in the event that the Exchange server crashes for a few hours or days, or if it goes down for scheduled maintenance, users can have access to their messages and keep getting things done from within Gmail until it’s fixed.

One benefit for Google is that any business that uses this has an easier time dumping Microsoft Exchange altogether and moving to Google Apps: Once you’ve got your corporate email environment replicated on Gmail, there’s no more worrying about the logistical headache associated with migrating from Exchange to Google Apps. Sneaky, right?

The new feature will be available for $13 per user per year to existing Postini customers, and for $25 per user per year to new customers. And here’s one thing I didn’t know: Postini, which is already a powerful weapon in the battle to control spam and email-borne viruses, is in use by about 80,000 businesses, accounting for more than 21 million end-users.

It’s a particularly interesting development coming just a day after Google lost out to Microsoft to provide cloud-based email, messaging and collaboration to the 120,000 employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a deal worth about $27 million over three years. Google, for its part, won a similar contract with the General Services Administration, and is suing the U.S. Department of Interior over terms of contracts that it says favored Microsoft when that agency went shopping for a cloud email provider.

Update: Here’s more from the Google blog.

Late Wednesday, its Motorola Mobility subsidiary slapped Microsoft with a lawsuit accusing the company of infringing 16 of its patents in a variety of products– including Windows, Exchange, Messenger, Outlook, Windows Marketplace, Bing Maps and Xbox.

“[We are] bringing this action against Microsoft in order to halt its infringement of key Motorola patents,” Kirk Dailey, corporate VP of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, said in a statement. “Motorola has invested billions of dollars in R&D to create a deep and broad intellectual property portfolio and we will continue to do what is necessary to protect our proprietary technology.”

Microsoft, for its part, seems largely unfazed by Motorola’s right-back-at-ya maneuver. Indeed, in a statement, Horacio Gutierrez–Microsoft’s deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing–essentially said the company was waiting for it. “This move is typical of the litigation process and we are not surprised,” he said. “We remain confident in our position and will continue to move forward with the complaints we initiated against Motorola in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and with the International Trade Commission (ITC).”

I’ve been testing two of these initial Windows Phone 7 phones, the Samsung Focus from AT&T and the HTC HD7 from T-Mobile; each will cost $200. Both are slender phones with large screens and virtual keyboards, though the Samsung is thinner and lighter than the HTC.

Microsoft has imposed tight requirements on the new Windows Phone 7 phones—including fast processors, decent screens and adequate memory. However, in my testing this time, I didn’t focus on the hardware. Instead, I bored in on the new Microsoft operating system, set to show up on nine phones this year, including some with physical keyboards.

My conclusion is that Microsoft has used its years in the smartphone wilderness to come up with a user interface that is novel and attractive, that stands out from the Apple and Google approaches, and that works pretty well. Instead of multiple screens filled with small app icons, or the occasional widget, Windows phones use large, dynamic tiles that can give you certain information, like your next appointment, at a glance. And it has special “hubs” for things like contacts and entertainment that use bold, attractive interfaces and offer personalized, updating information.

The Samsung Focus’s large touch tiles

However, despite having all that time to study its rivals, Microsoft has inexplicably omitted from Windows Phone 7 key features now common, or becoming so, on competitive phones. These missing features include copy and paste, visual voicemail, multitasking of third-party apps, and the ability to do video calling and to use the phone to connect other devices to the Internet. The Android phones and the iPhone handle all these things today.

Plus, because it has waited so long to enter the super-smartphone market, Microsoft is starting way behind in the all-important category of available third-party apps. At launch next month, the company hopes to have about 1,000 apps available for the Windows Phone 7 platform, compared with nearly 100,000 for Android phones and around 300,000 for the iPhone. That means Windows phones will, by definition, be less versatile than their main competitors, at least at launch.

In addition, Microsoft, unlike Apple, has ceded prominent home-screen real estate to the phone makers and carriers so they can push their own apps, like subscription-based TV and navigation services.

To be sure, Windows Phone 7 has a few advantages. These include built-in mobile versions of Microsoft Office (present for years on earlier Microsoft-powered phones) and of its popular Xbox Live gaming service, which also interacts with Xbox game consoles. There is a nice feature that allows the camera to be used quickly, even if the phone is locked. And search works particularly well, including a mode that allows you to enter search commands by voice from any screen. Phone calling also worked just fine, with few failed calls, good voice quality and easy connection to a Bluetooth device I tried.

But I couldn’t find a killer innovation that would be likely to make iPhone or Android users envious, except possibly for dedicated Xbox users. Even the built-in Office can be replicated with third-party Office-compatible apps on competing platforms; and the iPhone and Android phones also can interoperate with Microsoft’s corporate Exchange email, calendar and contact system.

So for now, I see Windows Phone 7 as mostly getting Microsoft into the game, and replacing the stale, complicated Windows Mobile system that preceded it. It will get better. The company is already working on a copy and paste system, and said it is coming early next year. But, today, I see Windows Phone 7 as inferior to iPhone and Android for most average users. It’s simply not fully baked yet.

The main feature of Windows Phone 7 is the Start screen, which takes the form of a long vertical list of tiles that can represent either an app or a hub. The phones lack multiple home screens or traditional folders for grouping apps. These tiles are dynamic: They can show things like rotating photos of friends, or how many unread emails you have.

Microsoft doesn’t intend for you to place every app or feature on the Start screen. Instead, some apps, like games, go automatically into one of the special tile hubs, which combine related functions. And all other apps pre-installed or added to your phone go into another long master list you can see by flicking aside the tile view or tapping an arrow.

It’s a clean, simple, different approach. But there is a downside. As you “pin” your favorite apps, contacts, photos or Web sites to the Start screen, the list of tiles grows longer, and you have to scroll further and further to reach some. There is no shortcut for getting back to the top of such a list, as there is on the iPhone.

The hubs have a level of social and functional integration seen on some Android phones and on Palm’s webOS operating system, now owned by Hewlett-Packard. For instance, in the People hub, you not only see your local contacts, but those synced from Facebook or Microsoft’s own Windows Live service. This hub, like the others, borrows the elegant interface from Microsoft’s failed Zune music player, so you can flick left and right to see just recent contacts or to see your friends’ status updates. But the People hub doesn’t have Twitter.

Microsoft sees this combination of tiles and hubs as a “glance and go” interface for quickly seeing important information without opening apps, as on the iPhone. But I was disappointed that more information wasn’t presented on the tiles. For instance, unlike in some Android apps and widgets I’ve used, a stock market tile and a weather tile I downloaded didn’t show on their surfaces the latest information.

The calendar, which syncs with Exchange, Windows Live, or Google, can’t sync with Yahoo or MobileMe, and lacks a week view. The email program syncs with a variety of services, but lacks a unified inbox, so you have to clutter your Start screen with separate tiles for each account.

Another downside for some users: The phones can be used in horizontal view for photos and Web pages, or for typing email, but some screens, like the Start screen and hubs, are fixed in vertical mode.

Microsoft has done a good job with the Web browser, which I found generally comparable in speed and features to the iPhone and Android browsers. But unlike on some new Android phones, it doesn’t support Adobe Flash content.

The People hub borrows the elegant interface from Microsoft’s failed Zune music player, so you can flick left and right to see just recent contacts or to see your friends’ status updates.

The built-in Office suite is very nice. It can link to Microsoft’s SharePoint corporate online document system. One of its apps, OneNote, also synced in my tests with Microsoft’s consumer-focused SkyDrive Web file-storage system. It has a nice feature that makes it easy to jump to sections of long documents, allows for making comments on files, and lets you see presentations broadcast over the Internet.

However, this new mobile Office failed to open a simple Word document I tried. Microsoft says this plain document had some hidden corruption, but it opened on an iPhone and Android, and was editable in their Quickoffice app. Microsoft says it is working on a fix.

Music, video and photos all worked well, and you can use a Zune subscription on the phone. I was easily able to sync media files with a Windows PC using a new version of the Zune software, and I also tried a pre-release version of the new Macintosh Zune software, which is more limited, but also worked properly.

The Microsoft app store, called Marketplace, worked fine, and has a nice try-before-you-buy feature for some apps.

Last but not least is the Xbox Live hub, the center for gaming. It contains games from Microsoft and other developers, and includes your avatar from the Xbox Live service. You can socialize with, and play against, others on the service. For Xbox Live fans, this is mobile heaven.

Overall, I can’t recommend Windows Phone 7 as being on a par with iPhone or Android—at least not yet. Unless you’re an Xbox Live user, or rely on Microsoft’s SharePoint corporate Web-based document system, it isn’t as good or as versatile as its rivals.

Find all of Walt’s columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101020/microsofts-new-windows-phone-7-novel-but-lacking/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100602/exclusive-google-buys-invite-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20100602/exclusive-google-buys-invite-media/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:18:42 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=20146

UPDATE: Google has now confirmed the deal.
————
Google has indeed bought ad technology start-up Invite Media, I’ve confirmed with multiple sources.

As I wrote last month, Invite is a three-year-old “demand-side platform” designed to help buyers navigate high-volume display-advertising exchanges–like the one Google launched last year.

I don’t have  a price for the deal nailed down, but I believe it’s in the $70 million range. Google (GOOG) declined to comment; I haven’t heard back from Invite Media CEO Nat Turner.

People familiar with the transaction say Google’s plan is to leave Invite running as a standalone unit, which will work at arm’s length with exchange’s like Google’s AdX, as well as competitors like OpenX, Yahoo’s (YHOO) Right Media and Microsoft’s (MSFT) AdECN.

That makes sense, because ad buyers who use Invite, like Publicis’s Vivaki, expect to be able to buy inventory from multiple exchanges.

But over time, Google does plan on investing in Invite and integrating it with DoubleClick for Advertisers, its ad-serving technology. Invite users wouldn’t be required to use DFA, but the two would be designed to match up seamlessly, sources said.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of Invite’s competitors, like MediaMath, Turn and X+1, in the wake of this deal. Venture capitalists have poured money into demand-side platforms in recent years, but I’ve heard increasing skepticism about valuations those investors are seeking. And now the most obvious buyer, with the deepest pockets, is off the table.

Turner and his co-founders started Invite Media when they were still undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania; the company has offices in Philadelphia and New York City. Investors include Comcast’s (CMCSA) venture arm and First Round Capital.

Invite had previously considered selling to Omniture last summer, but that deal went away after Adobe (ADBE) purchased the analytics company.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100602/exclusive-google-buys-invite-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100524/google-eyeing-invite-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20100524/google-eyeing-invite-media/#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 18:00:37 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=41326

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100524/google-eyeing-invite-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100523/with-admob-out-of-the-way-is-google-set-to-buy-invite-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20100523/with-admob-out-of-the-way-is-google-set-to-buy-invite-media/#comments Sun, 23 May 2010 20:05:41 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=19804 Now that Google has wrapped up its AdMob deal, what’s next on its shopping list? One good bet: Ad tech start-up Invite Media.

Industry sources believe Google (GOOG) is close to a deal for Invite, a three-year-old “demand side platform” designed to help buyers navigate high-volume display-advertising exchanges–like the one Google launched last year.

A deal has supposedly been in the works for some time, and one theory is that Google has been waiting for the AdMob saga to conclude before moving forward. Estimates for a price are all over the map, ranging from $60 million to $100 million.

The caveat: Google’s name has been linked to various DSPs for several months.

“We have not entered into any agreement with any company,” Invite CEO Nat Turner told me via email this afternoon. “I’ve honestly heard similar rumors about every other company in the space, so I don’t put too much credence in what people are saying these days.” A Google spokesman declined to comment on “rumor and speculation.”

Whether or not it makes sense for Google to buy Invite or any other DSP depends on whom you talk to. Some people think a DSP is a natural complement to Google’s AdX unit, since it makes it easier for big ad holding companies to funnel money into the exchange.

But others argue that since the point of a DSP is to let buyers work with multiple exchanges–like the one that Yahoo (YHOO) operates and the one Microsoft (MSFT) is testing–it makes no sense for buyers to use a tool owned by the industry’s biggest player. If anything, it makes much more sense for an ad buyer like Publicis’s Vivaki unit, which uses both Invite and Google’s exchange, to snap up Invite, they argue.

Turner and his co-founders started Invite Media when they were still undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania; the company has offices in Philadelphia and New York City. Investors include Comcast’s (CMCSA) venture arm and First Round Capital.

Invite had previously considered selling to Omniture last summer, but that deal went away after Adobe (ADBE) purchased the analytics company. I’m told the proposed price for that deal was $17 million.

Meanwhile, Google shows zero signs of slowing down its M&A binge, which began last summer. Last week, the company announced two deals in addition to AdMob: The search giant said it intended to buy Global IP Solutions for $68 million and announced that it had purchased Simplify Media a few months ago.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100523/with-admob-out-of-the-way-is-google-set-to-buy-invite-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100419/exclusive-news-corp-digital-media-group-contemplates-spin-off-and-equity-sale-of-fan/ http://allthingsd.com/20100419/exclusive-news-corp-digital-media-group-contemplates-spin-off-and-equity-sale-of-fan/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:03:27 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26981

While there have been reports that News Corp. is selling off its advertising unit, Fox Audience Network, the company has actually been in talks with a variety of private equity firms about spinning it off and selling only a 20 to 30 percent chunk of it.

Such a deal might not happen, of course, but the strategy behind this approach is related to a desire to create a strong consortium of advertising networks to fight the growing power of Google in the race to match display ad buyers with display ad sellers.

The worry: If Google (GOOG) dominates that business in the same way it dominates search, it’s game over.

The strategy is being spearheaded by News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller, who has played a role in a variety of moves by the media giant to thwart Google in the content space.

Also involved is Adam Bain, who runs FAN and who would be CEO of the potentially independent unit. The well-regarded exec has been of interest to a number of other companies of late, so a new company might also be a way to keep him in place.

Sources said Miller began to get some incoming investor interest in buying FAN, which has morphed into the current talks.

FAN sells ads for MySpace and other News Corp. sites, as well as some third-party partners. It is in the Top 10 of ad networks, with 147.6 million unique monthly visitors.

Under one possible scenario, which values FAN at about $150 million, a private-equity player–such as Silver Lake Partners–would own a piece but also guarantee a certain amount of additional funding to spur growth.

The goal here is to take on Google and its ad-buying power either by rolling up ad networks or exchanges or by “federating” them–pulling them into an alliance.

Critically important to such an ambitious plan by News Corp. is cooperation from at least one of the trio of big of ad networks at Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO) and AOL (AOL).

In addition, other ad networks could be part of the group, such as OpenX, which is strong in Europe. Interestingly, Miller is the chairman of Los Angeles-based OpenX.

There is, of course, a mass of onerous logistical issues with such a scheme, including a variety of technical differences among ad exchanges and the need for cooperation among many different companies.

“We would not want this to be ad confederation light,” said a source at one major player in the space. “Because then it’s worse than working alone.”

In addition, not everyone is worried about Google–despite its acquisition of DoubleClick–taking over the display network space as easily as it took over the search market. Currently, while AOL has the top spot, there is no dominant player akin to Google’s overwhelming position in the search market.

News Corp. declined to comment about its plans for FAN.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100419/exclusive-news-corp-digital-media-group-contemplates-spin-off-and-equity-sale-of-fan/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100323/another-ad-exchange-player-microsoft-vet-jeff-green-launches-the-trading-desk/ http://allthingsd.com/20100323/another-ad-exchange-player-microsoft-vet-jeff-green-launches-the-trading-desk/#comments Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:30:41 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=17686 Last fall Jeff Green left his job running AdECN, Microsoft’s (MSFT) entry into the real-time ad-exchange business. He didn’t go far. Green is building The Trade Desk, a start-up designed to help marketers buy advertising from exchanges like the one he left.

Green has rounded up about $2.5 million in financing for the Ventura, Calif.-based company. Founder Collective and Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Ventures led the company’s first round; angel investors include Josh Stylman, a co-founder of Interpublic’s Reprise Media, and Omnicom vet Jerry Neumann.

The Trade Desk is one of a growing number of “demand-side platforms” that are supposed to help ad buyers grab inventory from exchanges like AdECN and Google’s AdX. The idea is that the exchanges, which churn through a staggering number of ad impressions at very fast speeds, require ad buyers to use specialized software and services if they want to make the most of them.

It’s still unclear if ad buyers and publishers will embrace the exchanges. But investors love the notion, as well as the idea that the big ad holding companies, or perhaps even Google (GOOG), will want to buy a DSP or three. So the market for this stuff is beginning to get a bit frothy.

That’s one of the reasons Green is reluctant to use the word DSP to describe his seven-man company. But given that his team is still building the product and that he doesn’t want to talk about it until it’s up and running, we’ll have to use that term for now. You can get just a bit more info here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100323/another-ad-exchange-player-microsoft-vet-jeff-green-launches-the-trading-desk/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100316/xobni-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20100316/xobni-review/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:08:08 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1117 In the same way cellphone address books helped people stop memorizing phone numbers, the magic of auto-complete helped them stop memorizing email addresses. This feature, which is built into most email programs, lets users type as few as one or two letters before seeing and selecting from a list of addresses that may or may not be saved in the email program’s address book. Too bad auto-complete on your mobile device doesn’t work the same way.

On mobile devices, the suggested names in the “To” line only include those of contacts that are saved in a device’s digital address book. This leaves people stuck mid-thumb, trying to remember an email address, or worse, being forced to wait until they return to their desks to send a message.

This week, I tested an app that generates contact information for every person a user has ever communicated with in Microsoft Outlook—or if Outlook isn’t a factor, just with the device. I tested Xobni Mobile for BlackBerry, available as of March 16 at http://xobni.com/mobile. Xobni Mobile costs $10 as a stand-alone app from Xobni Corp. or $7 if it’s bought with Xobni One, the company’s new cloud-based storage service that costs $4 monthly. One year of Xobni Mobile with the Xobni One service costs $40.

I tested Xobni Mobile on my BlackBerry Curve 8900 and used the Xobni One service to connect with Outlook, which was running on my PC with Xobni’s desktop program installed. This app makes a big difference for people like me, who rarely sync their devices with their PCs, don’t primarily correspond with people in their corporate Exchange networks and don’t like taking the time to manually add names, email addresses and phone numbers into the Contacts section of the BlackBerry. This app also uses Xobni’s analytics feature to rank people, thus returning results sorted according to how much a user emails with someone.

More Meshing

Xobni Mobile could stand to do a better job of meshing with the BlackBerry’s operating system, especially considering that the company worked with Research in Motion (RIMM) to build a deeply integrated app. I’ll admit that it comes close—a finger swipe up on the email-compose screen opens the Xobni app. But as my high-school economics teacher always said, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. The process required to open the app, type the contact’s name, select the name from within the Xobni app and return to the compose screen can feel too long and a bit clumsy.

Another downside is that the Xobni Mobile app doesn’t yet integrate with text messaging or dialing numbers, so rather than pull up a phone number from within the device’s texting or dialing interface, users must open the app and select a contact before calling or texting. A Xobni representative said the company is working with RIM on deeper integration.

Xobni (“inbox” spelled backwards) started a couple years ago with its namesake product, a downloadable add-on for Outlook that analyzed and indexed all emails and ran in a side panel within the email program. Since its introduction, Xobni for Outlook has added enhancements, including the built-in ability to display an email contact’s Twitter and Facebook profiles. And some of these spill over into the mobile app.

Souping Up a Device

The Xobni desktop program currently works only on PCs (not Macs) that have Outlook installed, and runs only on high-end BlackBerrys, including the Curve 8900, Tour, Storm, Bold and Bold 2. The Xobni Mobile app connected to Xobni for Outlook using Xobni One considerably soups up the experience, adding an average of 10-times more contacts than the BlackBerry alone. The top 6,000 contacts (according to the analysis of who you email the most) will be stored locally on the device, as well as each contact’s photo, which gets pulled in from Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook or a Xobni account. Additional services connected to Xobni include Hoovers, Twitter and Salesforce.

People who don’t use Outlook and/or don’t want to pay for the Xobni One service can still use the app by itself with Web-based email programs running on the BlackBerry.

Finding Mom

I found myself using Xobni on my BlackBerry a lot, despite its extra steps and slightly cumbersome interface. For instance, it gave me three different emails for my mom, rather than the one outdated email of hers that I long ago manually stored in my BlackBerry Contacts and hadn’t updated since. I also liked Xobni’s way of pulling photos for many contacts onto my device.

I didn’t see a noticeable change in my BlackBerry’s battery life while using the Xobni app, though its battery will be taxed when it grabs large bunches of contacts and photos from the server. By default, this only happens when the BlackBerry is charging.

The Xobni One service demonstrates the company’s move into the increasingly crowded realm of backup software programs. When the BlackBerry is charging, this service updates the PC’s Outlook program with any changes on your BlackBerry and sends new contact data added to Outlook to the BlackBerry. If I lost my BlackBerry tomorrow or changed jobs next week, I’d still be able to retrieve several years’ worth of Outlook contacts and their profiles on a new BlackBerry using my Xobni One log-in credentials. (These same credentials, an email and password, are required when installing the app on the BlackBerry.)

Xobni hasn’t announced any definite plans for integration with other mobile devices, but a representative said that the company is considering making iPhone and Android apps.

If you use a PC, Microsoft Outlook and a BlackBerry, Xobni offers a smart solution for automatically organizing all of your contacts into one place and allows for your contacts to be stored somewhere other than just in Outlook or just on your mobile device. If it was a little easier to access on the BlackBerry, I’d like it even more.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100316/xobni-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100127/mozilla-thunderbird-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20100127/mozilla-thunderbird-review/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:04:53 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1156 The good thing about open-source software is that it harnesses the talents of techies around the world. The bad thing about open-source software is that it’s too often geared toward such techies, not average folks. That’s why there haven’t been many widely popular open-source products for mass-market computer users. The shining exception is the Firefox Web browser, which is published by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.

Now, Mozilla is trying for another win, with a new, overhauled version of the companion email program for Firefox, called Thunderbird. Unlike Firefox, Thunderbird never really caught on, partly because it was too complicated. The foundation has spent two years streamlining, simplifying and automating the email program. The result is the newly released Thunderbird 3, which will compete with products such as Microsoft Outlook on Windows and Apple Mail on the Mac.

While many people these days are content to store and manage all their email using Web-based interfaces provided by Yahoo (YHOO), Google (GOOG) and others, plenty of folks still want to use local programs. These save the messages to their own hard disks, include oodles of customized features, and can be more easily used offline.

But the choices among such local email programs are dwindling. Outlook, which can be bloated and slow for consumers, has driven out many competitors on Windows, and the new Windows 7 doesn’t even come with a built-in email program. On the Mac, most people seem to use Apple’s (AAPL) very good built-in email program, Apple Mail, but it’s hard for third parties to customize.

So, can Thunderbird 3, which is free and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, become the Firefox of email, the go-to choice for average users looking for an alternative to the big guys?

After testing the new edition for about a week, I believe that Thunderbird 3 is a significant improvement over earlier versions of the product. It is indeed a step forward, with some interesting new features and generally simpler operation. But, in my view, all the techie rough edges still haven’t been sanded off and it’s still clumsy in a few places.

First, the pluses. Mozilla has brought tabs, now standard in Web browsers, to Thunderbird. If you simply double click on an email in a list, it opens in its own tab. That way you can consult key emails when you need them without opening a welter of overlapping windows. If you do a search, the search results appear in their own tab.

The new Thunderbird also has a very cool filtered search system. It not only brings up all messages containing your search term, but shows a graphical timeline of the message traffic on that search term. In a left panel next to the list of search results, it lists all the people mentioned in the messages turned up by the search—even if you weren’t searching for them—and lets you further refine the results by just clicking on their names.

There is also a rapid way to add email addresses in a message header to your address book: You just click on a star icon next to the name. There also are multiple ways to view folders. With one click, you can choose to see a list of only unread folders, or favorite folders, or recent folders.

Another cool feature is an attachment reminder. If you are writing a message and you include words like “attachment,” “attached,” or “enclosed,” Thunderbird will pop up a yellow warning at the bottom of the screen reminding you to attach a file.

And, throughout the program, the designers have tried to simplify things, so you don’t have to be an engineer to use it. One example, which is a catch-up feature, is an account set-up wizard that spares you from knowing the names of servers.

But there are still too many issues for me. Thunderbird can’t be set to automatically show a CC or BCC line in a new email you’re composing. Every new address you add is set as a “To” address, and you must click on a drop-down menu to change it to CC or BCC—an extra step that becomes tedious quickly.

In addition, unlike in Outlook or Apple Mail, you can only have a single signature for each account. The program also doesn’t support Microsoft Exchange for corporate mail, unless IT administrators make changes at their servers.

And I found that the program’s preferences and settings, while improved, can still be too techie. For instance, to tell the program to display certain graphics in email, even though they can pose a security risk, you must choose an option called “mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image.”

To be fair, because Thunderbird is an open-source program, it relies on third-party add-ons and extensions for some features, such as multiple signatures. But some of the add-ins I tried, like a built-in calendar that can synchronize with Google, took multiple complicated steps that would likely deter a mainstream user.

If you’re looking for a new email client, the new and improved Thunderbird is worth a try, but it’s not yet the Firefox of email.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100127/mozilla-thunderbird-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100108/live-from-las-vegas-google-vp-of-engineering-andy-rubin/ http://allthingsd.com/20100108/live-from-las-vegas-google-vp-of-engineering-andy-rubin/#comments Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:06:26 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=31996

Once an Apple (AAPL) engineer, Andy Rubin went on to co-found mobile computing outfits Danger Inc. and Android, Inc. He sold the former to Microsoft (MSFT) and the latter to Google (GOOG), where he is now now vice president of engineering. He’s also the guy quarterbacking development of the company’s Android mobile operating system and the Nexus One–the smartphone with which Google hopes to fundamentally change the way people buy cellphones.

In conversation with All Things Digital‘s Walt Mossberg today, Rubin talked about the mobile space, Google’s plan for an enterprise version of the Nexus One and its vision for the way phones should be bought and sold.

Video clip: Highlights from Andy Rubin’s interview.

Walt starts off by asking Rubin about just how involved Google was in the development of Nexus One.

Rubin replies, “We threw out crazy ideas to our partners at HTC and they were pretty good about plucking the good ones out of the air and building them into the device.”

Walt asks about the new business model Google’s launched in concert with Nexus One. Was this something the company planned all along?

“This is the next phase of Android–taking the newest versions of the product, placing them online and allowing consumers to purchase them directly,” says Rubin. “What we’ve learned is that there are more efficient ways of connecting consumers with the phones they’d like to purchase…easier ways.” Purchasing a Nexus One through Google, says Rubin, is a casual process. “No one’s breathing down your neck,” he says. “No one’s trying to upsell you. … The experiment here is to allow consumers to experience the phone with no pressure, no upsell, they get into a product that best suits their needs.”

Walt: “You have T-Mobile as a launch partner, and the Nexus One is soon going to be available at Verizon and Vodafone. But you convinced T-Mobile to offer a specific plan for this device. T-mobile people told me that. You wanted a specific monthly price.” Why would you get involved in that if you’re separating the phone from service?”

“We’re trying to give consumers the best experience of our services,” Rubin replies. We wanted to provide something simple. People get confused with the current process … I get confused. We wanted a simple way to do it. Like the Google homepage … Simplicity is a big part of this.”

Interesting. Rubin mentions that Google is working on an enterprise version of Nexus One. What would a enterprise version of Nexus One look like? Would it support exchange? It might, says Rubin. “An enterprise version might also have a physical keyboard … it might be a world phone…” But then it’s a different device,” Walt suggests. Rubin: “Yes, it would be a different SKU.”

Video clip: Andy Rubin talks Exchange support and future Nexus One devices.

Nexus One is aimed at consumers who love their Google services and live in the “Google world,” Walt notes. Yet, Google is encouraging developers to build new apps for Android and Nexus One. How do you reconcile that? Isn’t there something contradictory to saying “we’re an app platform, we’re open,” and then turning around and saying “we’re really a platform for people who love Google?”

Rubin obviously doesn’t think so. He stresses that an OS can’t be successful unless people are developing for it. “It reminds me of the accessory business,” he says. “The most successful phones have the most earbuds, car chargers, etc.”

Walt wonders if Rubin is at all surprised by the size of the apps revolution, by the fact that there are 100,000-plus apps in the iTunes Apps Store.

“I’m not surprised by it at all. This is what happens when you drop the barriers to entry,” he says, recalling how difficult it once was for developers to distribute their apps and how easy it is today.

This new purchasing model Google has created for the Nexus One puts the company at the center of the experience. People who purchase the Nexus One think of themselves as Google customers. Rubin says, “What we’ve done here is to offer a mobile platform where people don’t have to worry about the plumbing.”

Walt notes reports today about people unhappy the customer service Google is providing for the Nexus One; there is only e-mail customer service, and no phone support. “People are being told they’ll have to wait two days for service,” says Walt. “How is this a good experience for consumers.” Rubin concedes that there is no phone support and that there is sometimes a 3-day delay in response time. “We have to get better at customer service,” he says. “We have to close that three day gap to a couple of hours.”

Video clip: Andy Rubin comments on the Nexus One customer service issues.

“So how important to the future is this app ecosystem,” Walt asks. “The app thing is a reflection of how many phones you’ve sold,” Rubin replies. That’s what developers invest in. There was a time when Android had as many apps as Palm has now.” “So on what date will you have 125,000 apps,” Walt asks, referring to Apple’s App Store. Rubin: “Well I’m sure someone could map that out with the right algorithm.”

Moving on to the issue now of 3G network performance, which is been a very real issue at CES, especially for AT&T. Rubin says Moore’s Law applies to bandwidth — 4G is on its way, and after that 5G. Walt suggests that the addition of new phones like the Nexus One and the host of other superphones going to exacerbate the problem. Rubin says that doesn’t have to happen; if carriers were more on point and did what was necessary to maintain and upgrade their networks dropped calls etc. would not be as much of an issue as they are for some carriers today.

In his interview with Kara Swisher earlier, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein–a former Apple engineer–said, “I don’t have an iPhone. I’ve never even used one.” In contrast, for those who may be wondering, Rubin says he does use an iPhone. “What do you expect? I’m a gadget guy.”

More Posts and Articles from CES

• Andy Rubin Highlights Video
• Andy Rubin Full Interview Video
• Andy Rubin Slideshow
• CES Full Coverage on AllThingsD.com
• Netflix CEO Reed Hastings interview with Peter Kafka
• Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein interview with Kara Swisher

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100108/live-from-las-vegas-google-vp-of-engineering-andy-rubin/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091214/cbs-tells-ad-networks-its-going-cold-turkey/ http://allthingsd.com/20091214/cbs-tells-ad-networks-its-going-cold-turkey/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:00:32 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13937 Here’s a blast from the pre-Lehman past: A big Web publisher that says it is going to dump ad networks and sell every piece of inventory itself.

CBS (CBS) says it will stop doing business with the ad networks, which are ubiquitous on the Web, and will offer access to its audience of 60 million unique visitors solely via its own salesforce.

AdAge’s Michael Learmonth says CBS, bolstered by its 2008 purchase of CNET, is the biggest publisher on the Web to cut off the hundreds of networks that try to match publishers and ad buyers.

Sounds right to me. Because while lots of people like to complain about ad networks, almost everyone uses them.

Other big publishers that have cut off ad networks entirely include Time Warner’s (TWX) Turner Networks, the Gawker Media blog network and…not many others.

The ad network debate in a nutshell: Anti-ad network types argue that handing over inventory to the networks gives publishers a short-term boost because it allows them to sell ads they wouldn’t move on their own. But doing so trains buyers to avoid buying higher-priced inventory from the publishers themselves, which means that stuff gets harder to sell in the long run.

The counterargument: What are you people smoking? Ad buyers should be trying to reach their target audience at the lowest possible price. And trying to fight that impulse is like fighting gravity.

Still, there is a larger movement afoot to try to at least sell some inventory at higher prices, even if that means leaving dollars (or pennies) on the table.

That’s one of the cornerstones of Aol CEO Tim Armstrong’s strategy, and it’s what Yahoo (YHOO) is trying to do as it reshapes its Right Media platform. See also: Firms like 5to1, which say they can turn publishers’ low-rent “remnant” ads into more valuable stuff.

The countermovement, though, is at least as strong, as ad buyers and brokers use technology to move more and more inventory at ever-more “efficient”–i.e., cheap–prices. See: Google’s (GOOG) relaunched DoubleClick exchange and the one that Microsoft (MSFT) intends to roll out next month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091214/cbs-tells-ad-networks-its-going-cold-turkey/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091118/yahoos-bartz-shuffles-the-exec-deck-filling-audience-and-other-top-slots-is-the-board-next-for-a-makeover/ http://allthingsd.com/20091118/yahoos-bartz-shuffles-the-exec-deck-filling-audience-and-other-top-slots-is-the-board-next-for-a-makeover/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:00:16 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20786

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is making the most substantive changes in her exec ranks since she did a massive restructuring of its staff in late February, according to sources close to the situation.

“She is continuing to clean the place up,” said one top exec about the moves, which are likely to be announced internally tomorrow.

Among the shifts in management will be filling the slot left by the departure of North American Audience head Jeff Dossett in May.

UPDATE: Sources say Yahoo’s head of mobile, David Ko, will get the job of top Audience exec, although it is not clear if he will have the same portfolio has former media heads at Yahoo.

Since Dossett left, his job has been split between Jimmy Pitaro, who runs Vertical Audience Experiences, and Tim Mayer, who is in charge of Search & Social Applications. They both currently report to U.S. EVP Hilary Schneider.

The job of Audience head is a key role, given that Yahoo’s powerful media properties are among its most valuable assets. In recent months, Yahoo has made some major changes in the way it creates its juggernaut News property.

Also to be filled is the job being done by Corporate Partnership SVP Jim Schinella, who, as BoomTown previously reported, is set to leave at the end of the year.

I could not determine who will take Schinella’s job, inside or out.

Interestingly, Yahoo has yet to name an international head.

Sources said the company had filled the position, using a headhunter, but the London-based media exec candidate backed out at the last minute. That meant Yahoo had to restart its search.

There might also be other top exec changes, all part of Bartz’s consolidation of power at Yahoo. She has named a spate of new top execs from outside, but has also kept some from the regime of former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang.

These staffing moves have come even as a stream of execs continued to depart the Silicon Valley Internet giant, including, most recently, Mike Walrath, who was SVP of advertising strategy. Walrath had led Right Media, the online ad exchange Yahoo bought for $680 million in 2007.

Walrath was widely expected to leave Yahoo in July, at the completion of his earnout from the acquisition, sources said, so the move was more sudden than expected internally.

Sources noted that Bartz moved Walrath’s departure forward in order to announce a new strategy for Right Media focused on premium publishers and to dump those ad networks and publishers of lesser ilk.

Whether this will stop the competitive onslaught in the ad exchange space is an open question given that Google has entered the fray significantly and that Facebook is widely expected to bolster its efforts.

Lastly, several sources said that there are also likely to be more changes on Yahoo’s board, which has seen the departure of two members recently.

In September, Maggie Wilderotter said she would leave the board by year’s end. And former Yahoo nemesis and investor Carl Icahn left the board in late October.

Whether Yahoo will replace them or keep its current size of 10 directors is not clear.

Also possible, several sources said, would be Bartz taking the chairman title, which is currently held by Roy Bostock. Bostock, along with Yang, played a key role in its botched takeover battle with Microsoft (MSFT).

Bartz finally successfully struck a sweeping search and advertising partnership with the software giant this summer, which is moving closer to being launched.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091118/yahoos-bartz-shuffles-the-exec-deck-filling-audience-and-other-top-slots-is-the-board-next-for-a-makeover/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091110/more-money-for-real-time-ad-tech-appnexus-raises-5-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20091110/more-money-for-real-time-ad-tech-appnexus-raises-5-million/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:11:16 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=12866 More money for ad technology: AppNexus, an ad-buying “platform,” has raised $5 million in a round led by Kodiak Venture Partners, along with Venrock and First Round Capital. The company is one of many trying to take advantage of “real-time” bidding for Web display ad inventory.

The funding is an “inside round”–only existing investors participated in the funding–which sometimes, but not always, raises a red flag. In this case, AppNexus says the funding is also an “up round”–its existing investors now think the start-up is worth more than they did the last time they bought in–but didn’t disclose a valuation.

There’s also a bit of fuzziness, still, about what exactly AppNexus does. The company says it provides a “gateway” to ad buyers who want access to ad exchanges like the ones operated by Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO)–Microsoft (MSFT) will launch its exchange next year–though many industry types think that AppNexus is itself an ad exchange.

The company certainly boasts lots of ad exchange bona fides. Co-founders Brian O’Kelley and Mike Nolet are both veterans of Right Media, the ad exchange Yahoo bought in 2007. And in September, the company brought on Michael Rubenstein, who had been running Google’s exchange.

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