One of the more controversial stances that the software giant Oracle had taken as part of its dispute over Java with the search giant Google was that 37 specific application-programming interfaces — software tools that programmers use to work with Java — could be subject to copyright protections. Today, the judge hearing the case ruled that they cannot.

Judge William Alsup ruled only on the issue of the 37 specific APIs, and didn’t tackle the wider issue over whether or not an API actually can be protected under copyright law. Some software developers had worried that it might be an overbroad interpretation that would tie up some widely used techniques under tricky copyright rules.

Oracle, you’ll recall, had sued Google, alleging both copyright and patent infringement over Google’s use of Java in creating the Android mobile operating system. Google had countered that Java is free to use, and that the APIs are more or less required to use Java in the first place. Oracle won a narrow, but hollow victory in the copyright phase of the trial, but lost outright in the patent phase.

Barring an appeal — and more on that, presently — Oracle won’t collect enough damages over the one case of infringement to cover the cost of the trial. A statement made during the trial limited the potential damages Oracle could collect from the one piece of software code infringed to about $150,000.

The key bit of Alsup’s opinion: “So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API.”

In a statement, Oracle promised to appeal. It also stuck to its guns that Google must make its implementation of Java within Android compatible with all other versions of Java, something that Google isn’t likely to do.

Here is the full text of Oracle’s response to Alsup’s ruling:

Oracle is committed to the protection of Java as both a valuable development platform and a valuable intellectual property asset. It will vigorously pursue an appeal of this decision in order to maintain that protection and to continue to support the broader Java community of over 9 million developers and countless law abiding enterprises. Google’s implementation of the accused APIs is not a free pass, since a license has always been required for an implementation of the Java Specification. And the court’s reliance on “interoperability” ignores the undisputed fact that Google deliberately eliminated interoperability between Android and all other Java platforms. Google’s implementation intentionally fragmented Java and broke the “write once, run anywhere” promise. This ruling, if permitted to stand, would undermine the protection for innovation and invention in the United States and make it far more difficult to defend intellectual property rights against companies anywhere in the world that simply takes them as their own.

And here’s Google’s comment:

The court’s decision upholds the principle that open and interoperable computer languages form an essential basis for software development. It’s a good day for collaboration and innovation.

I didn’t get a copy of the ruling, but ZDNet did, so I’m taking the liberty of embedding its copy here:

Oracle v. Google: Order Regarding Copyrightability of APIs

Mobile carriers are not evil or stupid. They are capitalists. That often produces behavior that appears to be evil and/or stupid. Depressingly often, in fact. But there’s usually a business reason for that behavior. And those who are arguing the paranoid case are ignoring those business models.

– Ed Bott, ZDNet author, in a post entitled Why Android Updates Are a Mess: It’s the Business Model

Here’s a ZDNet video of the gadgets I selected for the Churchill Club event that Walt Mossberg and I do annually.

This year’s celebrity geek guests were a pair of well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and VCs, Reid Hoffman and John Lilly; along with our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper.

Here’s the video of my stuff, with an assist from my No. 1 son, Louie:

Foley has found a Microsoft job posting that mentions the project, and notes its reference to “services and experiences revolving around music\video discovery and consumption”.

That nugget is enough for some observers to conclude that Microsoft is going after Pandora, the Web radio service, because Pandora’s service also fits that description.

Here’s the thing, though: Basically all Web media services now focus on “discovery and consumption” — that is, helping people find stuff they didn’t know they were looking for, and helping them buy/play it.

The one big exception is Apple’s iTunes store, which is primarily a place to go buy things you know you want. The fact that iTunes dominates the digital media market (particularly in music) is one of the reasons other services have focused on “discovery and consumption” — it’s a way to differentiate yourself against the market leader.

And for all we know, Ventura could feature an iTunes-style store, too. But based on Foley’s reporting, it’s likely to feature more than that, as well — just like every media service on the Web.

As ZDNet reports, Watson won the round with $4,400, while Ken Jennings had $3,400 and Brad Rutter brought in $1,200.

The game has been in the planning stages for years, and has been written about several times. The New York Times covered IBM’s work in a big story in 2009.

The whole point of teaching a computer to play “Jeopardy” lies in the complex computing work that’s required to make a machine understand natural human language and detect the same subtle cues of human speech that humans learn to understand over the years. “Jeopardy” questions can involve clever turns of phrases, riddles and other tricks of speech that can confuse a computer in ways that a game of chess won’t. Computers have already defeated humans at chess, you’ll recall, and it was an IBM computer that did it.

After the “Jeopardy” match, the human players said Watson had one distinct advantage: It doesn’t get psyched out. If another player wins a string of questions, it doesn’t suffer from the emotional response of losing confidence.

I don’t usually watch “Jeopardy,” or any game show for that matter. But I’m looking forward to seeing how the real game turns out.

Below is a rough video by ZDNet’s Larry Dignan, who attended the round.

Evidently the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer took one look at Palm’s (PALM) books and decided an acquisition isn’t worth the trouble. “There just weren’t enough synergies to take the deal forward,” a source close to talks between the two companies told Reuters.

And so speculation about a potential acquirer is turning elsewhere. Lenovo seems to be the leading candidate at the moment. The company has big aspirations in China’s mobile market and a penchant for making big foreign acquisitions. It purchased IBM’s (IBM) ThinkPad business a few years back and tried to buy Packard Bell, so why not Palm?

Well, for one thing, Palm’s market share is too small to be of real benefit to Lenovo. For another, the company is already committed to Google’s (GOOG) Android for the OS to run on its soon-to-debut Lephone.

Finally, Palm’s asking price is said to be around $1.3 billion. Lenovo had about $2.4 billion in net cash reserves on hand the end of 2009. Would Lenovo really spend more than half of that on Palm, a company whose books frightened off HTC? As Larry Dignan writes at ZDNet, it’s hard to make the case that it should.

So if not Lenovo, then who?

How about Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)? With handheld sales that fell by more than half year-over-year in its first quarter, HP is surely looking for a way to revive them and capture a larger portion of the important mobile market. Acquiring Palm could be a good way to do it. Here’s why:

• Yes, HP is a Windows shop with, no doubt, big plans for Windows Phone 7, but that OS will likely figure in devices aimed at the enterprise market. With Palm’s assets, HP could target the consumer space as well.
• Palm’s webOS is scalable. HP could use it in other devices–tablets, for example–differentiating them from those of competitors using open-source operating systems like Android.
• In Palm, HP would gain a turnkey smartphone division–a venture with a slick smartphone OS, a deep mobile patent portfolio, a talented R&D team, the beginnings of an app ecosystem and established carrier relationships.
• Palm and HP both call Silicon Valley home, and former Palm exec Todd Bradley currently heads up HP’s Personal Systems Group. Obviously, there would still be integration risks, but there are clear synergies in culture and location that would at least temper them a bit.
• HP has some $14 billion in cash on hand, more than enough to cover Palm’s rumored $1.3 billion asking price with plenty left over.

That seems to me to be a pretty compelling case. Has it been made inside HP? I can’t say for sure, though we may find out in the weeks ahead.

Check out the interesting observations made by a range of media and tech folks in a post by Technologizer titled, “The Future of Windows: 28 Perspectives and Proposals” on the 25th anniversary of the 1.0 version of the groundbreaking operating system.

The simple question being asked: How can Microsoft keep Windows relevant?

My wisecracking first answer: “Well, a more liberal policy on Windex, I suppose. Wait, you mean the software?”

Actually, I did try to recover, noting that I was not wedded to Apple (AAPL) systems, which I have mostly been using for years now, if Microsoft (MSFT) nailed touchscreen technology and worked better at innovative integration of social networking, software, Web and devices.

No surprise, blogger Robert Scoble had a laundry list of requests, such as these:

“I want everything I touch to be socialized. Why doesn’t Outlook know anything about Facebook? Why don’t my photos automatically get pushed to Flickr? Why don’t I have a news app on my desktop that brings in Tweets from Twitter? Why aren’t notifications built into the system at a deep level?”

ZDNet’s most excellent Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley was more dramatic:

“But what Microsoft really needs to do to insure Windows’ continued relevance is to be unafraid of introducing a whole new operating system at some point. At some point, in the not-too-distant future, Windows is going to need to be supplanted by ‘the next big thing.’”

USA Today’s Ed Baig would not go that far:

“Now, I’m by no means suggesting that Microsoft has to start from scratch when it comes to the traditional Windows OS for computers, much less prescribing specific changes…But what I am saying is that Microsoft shouldn’t be burdened by the shackles of legacy computing as it looks ahead.”

No matter what, of this I am still certain: More Windex!

Or as Toula Portokalos said in the movie comedy, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”: “My dad believed in two things: That Greeks should educate non-Greeks about being Greek and every ailment from psoriasis to poison ivy can be cured with Windex.”

Check out the other 24 ideas and add some of your own below.

Gillespie’s old unit, the CBS Interactive News Group, has been folded into a group with the company’s “business brands,” including BNET and MoneyWatch. Greg Mason, who was running the business group, now oversees the whole thing.

This one is literally old news, since it was announced internally all the way back on Jan. 26. But as you may recall, tech and business outlets were under a government mandate that week not to write about anything that wasn’t related to what we then called the Apple (AAPL) tablet. (Remember those days?)

The move would be bigger news if it augured a bigger shake-up at CBS’s digital side, especially since CBS Interactive head Quincy Smith has finally left the company to open up his own M&A shop. But CBS spokeswoman Sarah Cain says that’s not the case.

In a few hours, we’ll get a better sense of how CNET has performed for CBS (CBS) since the company acquired it in a $1.8 billion deal in 2008. CBS is set to announce Q4 earnings shortly, and estimates range widely depending on which analyst you listen to. Anthony DiClemente of Barclays Capital, for instance, thinks Interactive revenue will increase 10 percent, while the unit’s earnings will decrease by 8.8 percent; the consensus calls for an increase of 31 percent and a 36.2 percent drop respectively.

Meanwhile, for completists: Here’s Interactive boss Neil Ashe’s announcement explaining Gillespie’s move and the subsequent changes.

From: Neil Ashe
To: CBSi-ALL
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 1:15 PM
Subject: Tech, News & Business Announcement

Team:

We begin 2010 in an exciting position. Our brands are growing, and we continue to attract huge audiences and many of the world’s largest advertisers. As we look to the future, our focus remains on creating great content and experiences for our users, and great marketing solutions for our customers.

To that end, we are making changes today that streamline our division by bringing two business units into one. Tech & News and Business will now operate as a single business unit led by Greg Mason. Dave Morris will directly manage the sales organization for this new business unit while remaining in his role as Chief Client Officer for CBS Interactive. Joe Gillespie will work closely with me, Greg and Dave on making this transition a success. He’ll be with us until the end of March, at which time he has decided to leave the company to pursue new opportunities and his other interests, including a new appointment to the board of Jinni.com.

The creation of this new business unit will let us capitalize on the combined power of some of our biggest and most influential brands including CNET, CBSNews.com, CBS MoneyWatch, BNET, ZDNet and TechRepublic. It will also allow us to create better alignment between properties like CBS MoneyWatch and CBSNews.com where there are natural synergies between the content and audiences. This is good for CBS Interactive, as well as CBS as a whole.

For our marketing partners, this change helps simplify how clients work with us.  Individually, each business unit has seen great success cross-pollinating content and selling programs. Combined, we have the ability to do even more of these types of programs, but even faster and on a much larger scale. Dave will work closely with the sales team to create programs that take advantage of the combined power of these leading brands.  And of course, Dave will continue to be our primary representative in the marketplace for CBS Interactive as a whole.

Those of you that have worked with Greg know that he has an incredible track record of building and operating world-class brands, and repeatedly transforming businesses into success stories. He joined CNET Networks in 2000 and was instrumental in rebuilding our business after the bubble burst. He helped lead the charge to launch the Messaging Plus ad units in 2001, which put CNET Networks on the map in terms of industry leadership and innovation. From 2004-2007 Greg led CNET Content Solutions, which he transformed into one of our fastest growing and most consistently profitable businesses. Since 2007, Greg has been at the helm of our business portfolio, during which time he has launched two important new brands–BNET and CBS MoneyWatch, as well as led the continued success of our storied IT brands–ZDNet and TechRepublic.

Greg’s unique ability to manage large businesses, as well as infuse them with his entrepreneurial spirit will serve this new team well as we build upon our success and look to the future.

During his 6 years at CNET Networks and CBS Interactive, Joe has been a driving force in the continued success of CNET.  Under his leadership, CNET is recognized today as the #1 tech media brand in the world, and CBSNews.com became a site worthy of the legacy of CBS News. In 2008, Joe architected the complete relaunch of CNET, which has resulted in record traffic growth ever since. The site recently eclipsed 100 million users for 3 consecutive months (an all-time record). Early on, Joe initiated the use of video across the site, taking CNET beyond just product reviews and making it the definitive resource for people who love technology and want to get the most out of it. This vision also included broadening the coverage model with new content additions like Car Tech and Crave.

At CBSNews.com, Joe led a major site redesign, which has reinvigorated the site, driving growth and attracting new advertisers with a renewed focus on photos and original content. Since its debut in mid-June, unique users are up 22%, page views are up 12% and video streams are up 28%. Joe and his team were also instrumental in helping Katie Couric launch her online presence, executing her Campaign and Inauguration webcasts, and most recently the @KatieCouric webcast.

In addition to being a good friend, Joe has been an invaluable member of my management team and I want to thank him for all his contributions over the years. Please join me in wishing him all the best in his new endeavors.

I’m excited about the possibilities this new business unit creates for us. We’ve got great leaders in Greg and Dave, and world class brands with exciting opportunities in front of them. I know that this new, combined team will achieve great success and I look forward to a prosperous 2010 with the entire CBS Interactive team.

Best, NA

Last week, Walt Mossberg and I hosted the seventh annual gadgetfest, called “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology,” at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

Every year, we show off a range of innovative new tech toys to the crowd, helped by our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper, and by guest “tech geek” celebs.

This year, they were Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Schroepfer, the social networking site’s VP of Engineering.

Before the show, Walt and I displayed our wares for ZDNet, which posted videos, below

Here are the videos:

Walt

Kara

Last night, BoomTown moderated a really interesting panel for an organization called Girls in Tech, titled “Journalism 2.0 RoundTable.”

Girls in Tech describes itself as a “social network enterprise focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of like-minded, professional, intelligent & influential women.”

With those lofty requirements–combined with the fact that I was a girl when we had yet to land on the moon–I have no idea what I was doing there.

In any case, it was held in the San Francisco offices of MySpace and covered such topics such as: How blogging and citizen journalism have changed the landscape, what works in the highly connected digital media space, and, of course, the ups and down of being a woman in the male-choked tech industry in Silicon Valley.

The panelists included former San Francisco Chronicle tech editor Deborah Gage, ZDNet’s Jennifer Leggio, Ubergizmo Editor Eliane Fiolet, VentureBeat’s Camille Ricketts and TechieDiva’s Gina Hughes.

It was a lively discussion, with highlights such as Fiolet telling a hilarious story about an encounter of the irksome kind at a gaming conference and jokingly recommending violence as a solution, and Hughes talking about the sometimes trollish commenters of Yahoo (YHOO) when she blogged there.

Overall takeaway: Be loud, be proud and ignore all the noise. That, or make some more–and, preferably, via Twitter.

I also did a short interview at the event with social media blogger and PR guy Brian Solis about his latest book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.”

Natch, here is a lovely video I did–interviewing Solis, Hughes and Ricketts–which also includes yet another cruel “no comment” from Facebook’s talk-to-the-hand PR terror Brandee Barker:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090813/girls-in-tech-journalism-20-panel-speak-loudly-and-carry-a-big-stick/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20090526/my-bing-a-ling/ http://allthingsd.com/20090526/my-bing-a-ling/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 18:51:35 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=18334 What’s in a name? Apparently, the answer to Microsoft’s (MSFT) many search problems. As we previously reported, the software behemoth plans to debut its new search service at our D: All Things Digital conference later this week, and when it does it may have a new name.

Reports claim that Microsoft Live Search, once known as Windows Live Search and, prior to that as MSN Search, will henceforth be known as…

Bing.

Which is pretty much what we’ve expected all along. Just what form Bing will take is another matter entirely. Will it simply be Live Search updated and recast? Or will it involve something more? Like perhaps that long-rumored deal with Yahoo (YHOO) BoomTown’s been talking about? Or what if, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley speculates, “Microsoft and Yahoo announce some kind of jointly-managed company that will trade ad sales for search engine placement. This ‘MicroHoo’ won’t be a merged Microsoft-Yahoo. Instead it will be some kind of ad/search entity.” What if, indeed. We may find out later this week.

UPDATE: Interesting. ZDNet’s Larry Dignan points to a report from Jeffries analyst Katherine Egbert that suggests Microsoft is indeed preparing for some sort of joint venture or acquisition. A quick excerpt:

“It’s also possible that Microsoft could debut a partnership or make an acquisition of some type that will bolster its online search presence. The software giant registered an LLC Corp. in Delaware last week, a move often made in advance of acquisitions or joint ventures. The registration gave rise to widespread speculation that Microsoft would acquire Citrix since the name of the LLC is somewhat similar to Microsoft’s code name for Citrix. While that’s possible, the timing of the registration and recent debt raise indicate that it might be more likely Microsoft uses the LLC to form a partnership that will boost the amount of traffic flowing through its search engine, perhaps through a partnership with Yahoo! or others.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090526/my-bing-a-ling/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090421/would-microsofts-new-search-name-smell-as-sweet-if-it-were-named-after-a-cherry-or-the-sopranos/ http://allthingsd.com/20090421/would-microsofts-new-search-name-smell-as-sweet-if-it-were-named-after-a-cherry-or-the-sopranos/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:03:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=12575

What’s in a name?

Well, a lot, actually, and BoomTown supposes it would be just like those Pacific Northwest types at Microsoft to name the new version of its search service “Bing,” presumably after the cherry that is a big product in the company’s home state.

That moniker is one of many being bandied about in a group the software giant could be considering for the big relaunch of its search service, which the company has been prepping.

Microsoft’s search service is currently called–zzzzz–Live Search.

“All About Microsoft” crack blogger Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet recently wrote about the Bing name, which is registered to the company, as well as “Hook” and the one that Microsoft is using now as its test name, Kumo.

Kumo means “cloud” and “spider” in Japanese, which seems a wee bit esoteric.

Today, paidContent.org dropped “Sift” into the mix, although it seems to be related to mobile phones, along with “Swivel.”

I, for one, am feeling both like flour and getting dizzy at the thought of those names.

Foley at ZDnet feels the same, noting today in a post:

“(Would Microsoft be crazy enough to trademark its general Web search engine and its search engine for mobile with two different names, say Bing and Sift? As Windows Live has shown, truth can be stranger than fiction….)”

Microsoft (MSFT), of course, is keeping the name for its search service under tight wraps, but it is obviously going to be spending a shipload of money on its branding in another attempt to catch market leaders Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

Microsoft has been recently talking to Yahoo about a search partnership deal, although they are likely both to keep their brands and search products in any event.

Nonetheless, execs and minions in the know laugh at me loudly when I ask them to leak it to me.

(Note to anyone at Microsoft: Pretty please, someone leak it to me, even if it’s in the form of a memo from the leaky cauldron that is Yahoo.)

I doubt someone will, though. “It’s like Fort Knox secret,” said one Softie source, referring to the Kentucky fortress where the largest amount of the United States gold reserves are stored.

Hey, if Auric Goldfinger, OddJob and Pussy Galore could get into Fort Knox in that most excellent James Bond film, I can certainly find out the name of Microsoft’s search service!

Personally, I like Bing, and cherries from Washington state are indeed tasty (and coming soon too!)

According to the Heart of Washington Web site, its state’s cherries rate. Some fun factoids:

- Washington State produces more than 50 percent of all the sweet cherries in the United States.
- The Rainier cherry, which is yellow with a red blush, was made from a cross between two dark red cherries, the Van and Bing.
- Americans eat approximately 2.6 pounds of cherries per year.
- There are approximately 53 pitted cherries in one pound of cherries.
- The Bing cherry, which all cherries are measured against, was first developed in 1874 in Milwaukie, Ore.
- The Bing cherry was named after one of Seth Lewelling’s workers. The Bing cherry was developed by Seth Lewelling.
- Washington cherries are shipped around the world; the top three foreign markets are Canada, Taiwan and Japan.
- In 2001, there were 29,000 acres of sweet cherries in the state.
- The Washington cherry season begins in late May with some product seen at farmer’s markets. Commercial shipping begins around June 5, and will continue until mid-August. The peak of the season runs from June 20 to Aug. 1.

Plus, if Microsoft uses Bing, they could also rebrand their MSN online service, “Bada” and their email product, “Boom.”

Then, they can get Tony Soprano as their spokesman with the motto: “Bada Bing, Bada Boom, Notta Bada Algorithm!”

Or better still: “If you use Google, we’ll whack you!”

Now, that’s more like it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090421/would-microsofts-new-search-name-smell-as-sweet-if-it-were-named-after-a-cherry-or-the-sopranos/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090407/its-actually-about-selling-the-sizzle-and-not-the-steak-dean/ http://allthingsd.com/20090407/its-actually-about-selling-the-sizzle-and-not-the-steak-dean/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:01:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=11844

BoomTown read a ton of the various columns reacting to the Associated Press’s announcement of a new initiative to–as near as I can tell–stop the Internet from being the Internet.

I tease, as it is clearly a lot more complicated than that. But AP board Chairman and MediaNews group CEO Dean Singleton seemed very exercised about his mission to “protect news content from misappropriation.”

It’s going to surely be an interesting debate, throwing even more light on both the way the Web has impacted media companies, but also just how valuable those companies are (or are not–for an interesting take on that, see this excellent piece by ZDNet blogger Larry Dignan).

The winner for the most curious quote yesterday, though, was from an interview Singleton gave to paidContent.org’s Staci Kramer about new models to come.

Said Singleton: “Print is still the meat. Online’s the salt and pepper.”

I would actually say online is increasingly the sizzle.

But what Singleton left out, especially given the financial trouble his company is currently in, was far more important–it’s the consumer doing the grilling.

Thus, it goes without saying that the meat could be in danger of being a tad well done if media companies are not careful in how they handle this new attack on how those consumers prefer to get their news.

In the meantime, here is a very pertinent–the Internet is good at that stuff–and very funny video of an “eat your steak” commercial:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090407/its-actually-about-selling-the-sizzle-and-not-the-steak-dean/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20090323/dont-believe-the-skype-hype-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090323/dont-believe-the-skype-hype-2/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:00:03 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15179 Describing its long-term financial outlook to analysts last week, eBay (EBAY) said it expects Skype to more than double its revenue to over $1 billion by 2011. Quite a claim to make about an Internet telephony business for which the company has taken some pretty nasty write-downs, a business that back in January eBay seemed to be looking to divest. But apparently, eBay sees quite a bit of promise in Skype’s new voice-over-IP service for businesses. Launching in beta today, Skype for SIP for Business allows companies to make domestic and international Skype calls from their corporate telephone systems rather than their PCs. Initially, the company will charge about 2.1 cents per minute for calls to cellphones and fixed lines, but Skype-to-Skype calls will be free. That’s a potentially compelling proposition for business customers looking to make low-cost calls to fixed lines and mobile phones around the world.

“If you’re selling something or running a campaign–if you want to do that in the traditional world, then you would set up an 800 number, for example,” Stefan Oberg, the head of Skype’s business division, told ZDnet. “But 800 numbers are local to a country. So if you’re an international business, you have to set up 800 numbers in many countries. Now a company can have a button on their webpage or refer to Skype in an ad, and it’s like a virtual, global 800 number.”

As I said, a compelling proposition. But will enough companies take Skype up on it to really cause a significant increase in revenue? Particularly in a market as competitive as business communications? A market in which traditional phone companies are already peddling their own VOIP offerings?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090323/dont-believe-the-skype-hype-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090323/dont-believe-the-skype-hype/ http://allthingsd.com/20090323/dont-believe-the-skype-hype/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:00:03 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15179 Describing its long-term financial outlook to analysts last week, eBay (EBAY) said it expects Skype to more than double its revenue to over $1 billion by 2011. Quite a claim to make about an Internet telephony business for which the company has taken some pretty nasty write-downs, a business that back in January eBay seemed to be looking to divest. But apparently, eBay sees quite a bit of promise in Skype’s new voice-over-IP service for businesses. Launching in beta today, Skype for SIP for Business allows companies to make domestic and international Skype calls from their corporate telephone systems rather than their PCs. Initially, the company will charge about 2.1 cents per minute for calls to cellphones and fixed lines, but Skype-to-Skype calls will be free. That’s a potentially compelling proposition for business customers looking to make low-cost calls to fixed lines and mobile phones around the world.

“If you’re selling something or running a campaign–if you want to do that in the traditional world, then you would set up an 800 number, for example,” Stefan Oberg, the head of Skype’s business division, told ZDnet. “But 800 numbers are local to a country. So if you’re an international business, you have to set up 800 numbers in many countries. Now a company can have a button on their webpage or refer to Skype in an ad, and it’s like a virtual, global 800 number.”

As I said, a compelling proposition. But will enough companies take Skype up on it to really cause a significant increase in revenue? Particularly in a market as competitive as business communications? A market in which traditional phone companies are already peddling their own VOIP offerings?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090323/dont-believe-the-skype-hype/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081125/is-microsoft-about-to-launch-its-own-mobile-phone-updated/ http://allthingsd.com/20081125/is-microsoft-about-to-launch-its-own-mobile-phone-updated/#comments Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:31:26 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=6348 Well, everyone else is in the phone business, so why not Microsoft (MSFT)?

There are several reports suggesting that the company may soon do exactly that.

On Friday, tech news site TheInquirer.net reported that the company is developing a phone that will use an Nvidia processor called Tegra. The phone supposedly will be launched at the 3GSM conference this coming February.

Today, CNBC offered a slightly different version of the Microsoft phone rumor, asserting that the company will create a Zune-based phone code-named “Pink,” which could be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. There have been rumors about the nature of the company’s “Project Pink” going back at least a year; back in May, ZDNet reported that Pink consists of a set of consumer-focused premium mobile services, including some from its Danger acquisition.

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081125/is-microsoft-about-to-launch-its-own-mobile-phone-updated/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20081110/van-natta-takes-playlist-ceo-job-with-new-investment-by-pittman/ http://allthingsd.com/20081110/van-natta-takes-playlist-ceo-job-with-new-investment-by-pittman/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:00:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=6295

Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist. Pittman will also join its board.

Playlist has previously raised several million dollars, said sources, but the new funding is many times that, to total about $18 to $20 million.

The move to Playlist is an interesting one for Van Natta, who has looked at a number of jobs since leaving the high-profile social-networking site earlier this year.

He has talked to a wide range of companies, sources said, including Microsoft (MSFT) and a range of start-ups, as well as with MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS). (News Corp. also owns this site).

Those talks between Van Natta and MySpace to run its new music initiative did not pan out for a variety of reasons.

But he has long expressed a desire to become a CEO of a company, rather than just head to another executive job within a larger company, so the move to run a start-up is not a surprise.

In an interview this afternoon, Van Natta told me he got very intrigued by the possibilities at Project Playlist, which was the first iteration of the start-up and in which he is an investor, due to its viral growth.

And, indeed, Playlist has grown quickly to become one of the larger music communities on the Web, claiming that more than 38 million music fans monthly, sharing playlists via its Web site and also widely distributed embeddable widgets. The site has tens of millions of daily page views, according to surveys.

To get to those big-scale numbers, Playlist essentially has offered users a giant linking service for music, not unlike Google (GOOG) with all information, pointing users to promotional, free and sometimes illegal music and music video tracks all over the Web.

Those links to illegal music have resulted in a lawsuit aimed at Playlist from the music industry, sources said, a sadly typical experience of many online music services.

The usual tactic for the music giants: Sue first and shake down later.

Under Van Natta, I would guess, Playlist is likely to reach out to music companies and strike deals.

The company also needs to settle on its main business plan, which appears to me to have been less important than its explosive growth.

Playlist currently does have some small amount of advertising on the site, and seems to be making most of its scratch from sending leads to ringtone sellers.

Van Natta did not want to reveal specific strategies for Playlist going forward, only noting the opportunity is large.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta. “And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge.”

That said, there have been a lot of music-aimed efforts like Playlist in the music space, with a lot of different business plans and varying degrees of success, ranging from the Apple (AAPL) behemoth iTunes site, which sells single songs, to the CBS (CBS) music service, Last.fm, which relies more on advertising revenues.

Other contenders in the space include the Rhapsody subscription service from RealNetworks (RNWK), music discovery service iLike and many others. MySpace has also waded deeply into the music space, and Facebook is also reportedly weighing its own service.

Van Natta was one of Facebook’s earliest and most prominent execs, serving in jobs like COO and also Chief Revenue Officer while there.

He came to Facebook in the fall of 2005, after a stint as VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon, and was part of the founding team of A9, the Amazon search company.

“I am excited to be building a company again,” said Van Natta, who has taken many months off since he left Facebook in February.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081110/van-natta-takes-playlist-ceo-job-with-new-investment-by-pittman/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20080730/the-entire-d6-interview-with-the-gates-foundations-melinda-gates-3-of-4/ http://allthingsd.com/20080730/the-entire-d6-interview-with-the-gates-foundations-melinda-gates-3-of-4/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:28:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=2452 We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Unfortunately, due to issues too complicated to go into, we have to post all the D6 interviews in several 15-minute parts (I know, I know).

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety over the next weeks in this column.

Here’s Part 3 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates.

(I will be posting one video part of the discussion with Melinda Gates every day this week through Thursday.)

As you will see, Melinda Gates is articulate in ways that are critical to the task that she and her husband–that would be Microsoft (MSFT) Founder Bill Gates–have put before themselves: Big league philanthropy with deeply effective results, specifically in health and learning.

In this video, Melinda Gates talks about the best ways to fix the broken parts of the public high school educational system in the U.S.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080730/the-entire-d6-interview-with-the-gates-foundations-melinda-gates-3-of-4/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080425/wordpress-matt-mullenweg-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20080425/wordpress-matt-mullenweg-speaks/#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:15:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080425/wordpress-matt-mullenweg-speaks/

This week, I had lunch with one of the nicest young Web entrepreneurs around the scene, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg.

We use a custom WordPress.com installation for this site, which has worked out well for us, and the start-up also hosts AllThingsD.com. We also got a very nice hoodie.

In all seriousness, the company started as an open-source blogging software project at WordPress.org with Mullenweg as founding developer, while WordPress.com is for-profit and is run by Mullenweg and others at a start-up called Automattic.

Mullenweg came to San Francisco from his hometown of Houston to work on WordPress and other projects for CNET in 2004. He left a year later to work full-time on the development of WordPress.

It and others like it quickly rode the wave of an ever-growing trend of self-publishing, which has been increasingly embraced by both the single person writing about their cat to the large-scale media companies looking to develop more dynamic properties online.

WordPress and Automattic (which also runs Akismet, an anti-comment and trackback spam software service) has been the frequent target of takeover speculation.

But, while Automattic has reportedly considered those options, as well as hooking up with other companies like Sphere (which was just bought for $35 million in cash by AOL [TWX]), Mullenweg seems just as determined to build out his simple publishing platform, by adding ad networks and all sorts of bells and whistles to the offerings.

In fact, WordPress competitor Six Apart did just that last week with its acquisition of the New York-based ad, design and consulting services firm Apperceptive.

So I will bet Mullenweg probably has some news of his own, when he gives a short speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this morning.

We’ll see, but in this video, Mullenweg talks with BoomTown–after we admit to an obvious man crush on him–about the progress in the blog-publishing arena and where it is all going.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080425/wordpress-matt-mullenweg-speaks/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20080306/cnets-dan-farber-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20080306/cnets-dan-farber-speaks/#comments Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:46:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080306/cnets-dan-farber-speaks/ In a new BoomTown occasional feature that I am calling “Meet the Geeky Press,” here’s a video interview I did with Dan Farber, who was just appointed new editor-in-chief of CNet’s News.com, while I was at the Graphing Social Patterns West conference in San Diego earlier this week.

Farber, a longtime tech reporter and columnist, as well as a blogger, replaces Jai Singh. Farber was previously editor-in-chief of CNet’s ZDNet.

The tech news-and-reviews online media company has been under a lot of pressure lately, with challenges from some aggressive investors who are trying to take control of CNet, as well as increased competition from all over the Web that is impacting its traffic.

In any case, in Farber, who also ran ZDnet’s blogging network, CNet has a solid journalist in charge.

In the video, Farber and I talk about a wide range of issues, from Web consolidation to the trends in social networking to future tech trends, including his thoughts on Google and Apple:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080306/cnets-dan-farber-speaks/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080107/buh-bye-bill-techs-heart-will-go-on/ http://allthingsd.com/20080107/buh-bye-bill-techs-heart-will-go-on/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:51:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080107/buh-bye-bill-techs-heart-will-go-on/ Lots of people were bellyaching about the lackluster nature of Bill Gates’s final performance at CES last night–long on deals and stats and short on the futuristic predictions Gates often makes.

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski was unimpressed, as were Duncan Riley of TechCrunch and ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, for example.

But, to my mind, giving the Microsoft co-founder and chairman a hard time at this point is sort of like razzing Celine Dion, who coincidentally also just completed her own longtime run in Las Vegas in her Caesars Palace show, “A New Day.”

In other words, let’s just all admit that–as irksome as both have sometimes been–they do kind of grow on you after a while.

While that may be still debatable with Dion, I know, it is squarely the case with Gates, who has had the longest-running and most complicated relationship with the tech industry, even as he has dominated it for most of the past two-plus decades.

Gates’s impact will surely be chewed over in the history books in centuries hence–likely as not, always with the Yin to his Yang, Steve Jobs of Apple.

And, despite all the controversy his tenure has engendered (most especially the bullying antitrust behavior), as he transitions from his day-to-day role at Microsoft in July in what will likely be one of the longer goodbyes in the digital arena (including his sixth appearance at our D6 conference in May), I am guessing his influence will be seen as a net plus in the years to come.

While many level charges at Microsoft as a hindrance to innovation over the years, via the overwhelming dominance of its Windows operating system, the fact of the matter is that the digital industry has never been more fast-moving and quick-changing, and it remains one of the brighter spots in the pantheon of businesses worldwide.

While that is not because of Gates and Microsoft alone, it is also not in spite of them either. In fact, it’s quite bracing to see Gates attempt to make quick shifts over the years as technology has raced past him, an indication of just how powerful change is compared to the world’s richest man.

Very powerful, as it has turned out, and watching Gates try to keep up has been a perfect metaphor for all those who labor in the tech sector.

His famous December, 1995 sleeping-giant-has-awakened speech about the Internet was a case in point, as were his aggressive moves in later years into a wide range of arenas such as gaming, search, online services, social networking and even an attempt to take on the iPod hegemony with the Zune.

It is clear that most of Microsoft’s efforts outside of its core software business–and a great business it remains, by the way–have been less impressive. But it points to a key factor that never changes throughout the tech arena that even the giants are always vulnerable.

Now, going forward, what Microsoft will do post-Gates, of course, is all that matters.

Will it try to vaunt ahead in the search and portal arena and catch No. 1 Google by attempting to acquire Yahoo?

Will it use its popular Xbox to finally move successfully into the home-entertainment space, as evidenced by announcements Gates made last night at CES about deals with media giants like NBC Universal and others?

Can its MSN ever be more than just an also-ran portal?

What will happen to software in the years ahead as applications inevitably move to the Web?

Gates will not be the one to figure it all out, as he will be off, focused on his laudable philanthropic work when these questions and more get answered.

But even he could not have made an accurate guess onstage last night, as much as pundits wanted him to.

In fact, one of the more tiresome things to endure at CES–aside from the long lines–is always having to listen to the spate of predictions of what is to come, when, the truth is, no one really knows how it will all turn out.

It was always thus. After all, reaching way back in history: Wasn’t the launch of the Titantic supposed to herald in the age of high-tech super-boats? Of course, no one figured in the tragic results from its encounter with an iceberg.

But it did make for a pretty good song, so let’s enjoy a bit of Celine to send Bill Gates off on what one hopes is a much safer journey:

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