Vista and Mac usage both on the rise

Windows XP falls one percentage point in terms of market share


Windows Vista made its biggest leap yet in November -- the operating system was in use on nearly one out of 10 Internet-connected computers last month, according to a research firm

Vista's exact share rose about one percentage point to 9.19 percent in November, up from 7.94 percent in October, according to Net Applications. In contrast, Vista's predecessor, Windows XP, fell by about one percentage point from 79.41 percent of all Internet-connected computers in October to 78.37 percent in November, according to Net Applications. Meanwhile, the Mac platform's share continued to grow, reaching nearly 7 percent.

Windows' overall share continues to exceed 92 percent, according to the Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based research firm.

Linux was in use on 0.6 percent of PCs worldwide, according to Net Applications. Despite its small share, Linux's slice of the market has nearly doubled since the beginning of the year.

Vista's share has grown from 0.2 percent to 9.2 percent since the beginning of the year. XP's share, meanwhile, has fallen from to 78.4 percent from 85 percent at the beginning of the year.

Internet Explorer 7's share continued to grow, reaching nearly 37 percent. It is poised to eclipse its predecessor, IE6, which has fallen more than 14 percentage points since the beginning of the year, to 40.2 percent. Altogether, IE was in use on 77.4 percent of Internet-connected computers, down from 80 percent at the beginning of the year.

IE's main competition, Firefox, held a 16 percent share of all Internet-connected computers. That's up from 13.7 percent at the beginning of the year.

Apple Inc.'s Safari held 5.1 percent, up from 4.7 percent at the beginning of the year.

Net Applications also debuted a beefed-up presentation of its survey results. As part of that, the firm showed off a map displaying Mac share by state headlined "Democrats vote for the Mac?"

The states with the highest percentage of Mac users, in order, were Hawaii (15.9 percent), Vermont, (15.1 percent), California (12.8 percent), Oregon (12.7 percent), New York (12.3 percent), Alaska (11.9 percent), and Massachusetts and Maine (both 11.2 percent).

The states with the lowest percentage of Mac users were West Virginia (3.5 percent), Mississippi (3.7 percent), Alabama (4.5 percent) and South Carolina (4.6 percent).

Net Applications noted the similarity to the map of blue and red states during the 2004 presidential election.

Activision hopes Blizzard merger can take it online

Activision hopes a planned merger with Vivendi's games units, Blizzard Entertainment and Sierra Entertainment, will help it take its game portfolio online, company executives said Monday.

But the exchange won't be two-way: Blizzard has no plans to put its games on consoles, a market where Activision is strong.

Vivendi aims to acquire a majority stake in Activision with a combination of shares and cash, followed by a share buy-back. The deal will result in the creation of a new company, Activision Blizzard, of which Vivendi would own between 52 percent and 68 percent depending on the level of interest in the share buy-back.

Blizzard is best known for World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game for PC users. Players pay a monthly subscription for access to the game's servers, where they can interact with thousands of other players in a fantasy world. Other Blizzard titles include Starcraft and Diablo, which can also be played online.

Activision, the publisher of Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and Tony Hawk games, had previously tried to move into the online games business, but "Blizzard operates in categories that are very difficult to compete against," Activision Chairman and CEO Robert Kotick said in a conference call with analysts on Monday.

Once the merger is complete, though, Activision "will leverage Blizzard's knowledge of online gaming and subscription models to generate steady revenues and higher operating profits," he said.

The gaming market was worth around US$28 billion last year, $6 billion of it in online games, with Activision Blizzard businesses representing just a 15 percent share, according to Kotick. "There's tremendous room for growth," he said.

For Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime the growth opportunities are more of the same: "We intend to grow our subscriber base in markets we are in, and in new markets as broadband penetration grows in territories like Russia, India and other emerging markets."

Despite the rise in popularity of Internet-connected game consoles such as the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, though, "There are no plans to launch any of the Blizzard franchises on consoles," Morhaime said.

Like Activision, Sierra and Blizzard are based in California, far from Vivendi's Paris headquarters.

Vivendi expects to close the two-phase deal in the first half of next year. The first phase -- a payment of $1.7 billion in cash and €8.1 billion in newly issued shares in its gaming division, in return for 52 percent of Activision -- would give it control of the combined entity for relatively little cash. Activision shareholders are being offered $27.50 per share, a premium of 31 percent on the average price over the last 20 days, Vivendi said.

After the second phase of the deal, in which the new Activision Blizzard will offer to buy back its own shares up to a value of $4 billion, Vivendi could be left with as much as 68 percent of the company.

Apple seizes 6.81% online market share

Apple has jumped to 6.81 percent market share of the OS market, according to the latest research from Net Applications.

The figures confirm a slow down in market share in October, which quickly became an increase once Leopard reached retail, driving Apple's slice of the online client market up 3.34 percent.

Industry watchers may note that 6.81 percent is Apple's largest slice of the market for a decade, putting the company in second place behind systems from Microsoft.

Apple's iPhone OS also grabbed a slice of share, taking 0.09 percent within the 'others' category, which also includes PlayStation (0.02 percent), the Nintendo Wii (0.01 percent) and the Sun OS (0.01 percent).

Net Applications surveys sample data from visitors to 40,000 websites operated by its clients. Results should be considered a snapshot of the scene, rather than hard and fast statistical analysis.

Microsoft buys startup to boost Web, mobile services

Microsoft has purchased Seattle startup WebFives, which provides a Web-based file-sharing service for Internet and mobile video, photos, audio, and blogs, according to a message posted on the startup's Web site.

WebFives, previously called Vizrea, was founded by former Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Michael Toutonghi, who helped pioneer the Media Center version of the Windows OS, many of the features of which found their way into Windows Vista.

On the WebFives Web site, a message attributed to Toutonghi said Microsoft agreed to purchase the company in November, and WebFives will close and shut down its service on Dec. 31. The service gives users a hosted Web site to which they can automatically upload multimedia content from mobile devices, as well as other features.

At that time, "any content previously uploaded to WebFives user accounts will be deleted from our servers and no longer available online," according to the post. Microsoft will incorporate WebFives' services into its own products and services, Toutonghi wrote. WebFives services also include a mobile Web site, widgets and a WebFives media player that can be put on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as other social-networking and messaging services.

He hinted that those products and services may include Microsoft's Windows Live Web-based services and MSN online multimedia content site. "I encourage you to look at MSN Spaces and/or Windows Live services as an alternative to WebFives for serving your video, photo, music sharing and blogging needs on the Internet," Toutonghi wrote.

Microsoft indeed has been looking for ways to boost the value, and thus revenue, of its Online Services Group (OSG), which oversees MSN and Windows Live. Microsoft hopes these properties will help boost its online advertising revenue to compete with Google.

The company also has said its mobile device strategy, the linchpin of which is its Windows Mobile OS, will be a priority for the company as a way to diversify its revenue, which primarily comes from its Windows OS, Office business productivity suite and server software such as the SQL Server database and other enterprise products.

In November 2005, Microsoft rebranded many of the former MSN services Windows Live, and announced its intention to roll out more services to complement its popular e-mail and instant-messaging services. After a long beta period in which users could access and use a host of services for free, Windows Live. 1.0 emerged from testing last month. Microsoft divides its Windows Live offerings into two sets -- online services such as Windows Live Hotmail and applications that users install on their PCs, such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Microsoft also purchased digital media services agency aQuantive for US$6 billion this year, a deal that closed in August and was the company's most expensive acquisition to date. So far, however, its online investments have not done much to boost OSG revenue, and analysts remain critical of the company's efforts.

Microsoft public relations representatives reached Monday said they were not aware of the WebFives deal and could not immediately comment.

Study: IT spending to see anemic start in 2008

The new year will see belt-tightening in the IT industry, as many customers look to hold down their technology spending, according to a study from ChangeWave Research.

The investment advice firm's report found that 24 percent of respondents said their organizations planned to increase IT spending in the first quarter of 2008. That figure clashed with the usual seasonal growth found in previous years.

An additional 20 percent said spending will drop or be nonexistent, up 3 percentage points from the last study, in August. Another 51 percent said spending will remain the same.

However, some 17 percent of respondents said they had spent more money than planned so far in the fourth quarter, a finding the report singled out as a relative bright spot.

"We just have a murky corporate IT spending environment," said Paul Carton, ChangeWave's director of research. "This shows why the Fed has to cut interest rates to ease the credit crunch. When credit tightens, the first thing that takes a hit is capital spending, IT spending."

The study also polled respondents on their choice of smart-phone vendors. Research in Motion's BlackBerry was dominant here, with a 73 percent share, up two points from the previous survey. In contrast, Palm fell four points to 19 percent, followed by Motorola with 11 percent. Apple's iPhone gained three points to reach 5 percent market share, but according to ChangeWave this growth is occurring "primarily among small to very small companies."

ChangeWave said 1,964 people involved with IT spending in their companies took part in the study, which was conducted between Nov. 12 and Nov. 23.

French auction regulator sues to close down eBay France

The French auction regulatory authority is seeking to close down eBay France for operating an online auction without a permit, it announced Monday.

The authority accused eBay of hiding behind the status of broker to avoid giving the required legal guarantees to buyers and sellers, in breach of a July 2000 law that regulates auctioneers online and offline. It has asked the high court in Paris to order eBay to stop auction sales in France until it has the required legal authorization.

The action is completely unjustified, according to a statement from eBay, which said it has "invented another way of buying and selling" not covered by the law on auction houses.

Last month, the regulator filed suit against the online car auction site Carsat.fr seeking a similar court injunction to halt its activities, which it said were being conducted without due authorization, and warned that other online auctioneers faced similar action.

The authority has until recently shown a certain tolerance for the activities of online auctioneers, which were a still-emerging sector when it was created by the July 2000 law.

That law makes a clear distinction between the activities of online auctioneers, which have a mandate from the owner of the goods to sell them to the highest bidder, and online auction brokerages, where no third party intervenes between the buyer and the seller to complete the sale. Online auctioneers must obey the same rules as physical auction houses, in particular taking responsibility for delivering the goods to the buyer, but auction brokers are almost exempt from regulation, except where the goods sold are "cultural products" such as books, CDs or DVDs, according to the regulator.

In its annual report last year, the regulator warned that it was urgent to regulate the activities of online auction sites, where 60 percent of sellers of "cultural products" appeared to be businesses.

The regulator expressed its concern that companies operating auctions without permission did not offer the necessary protection for consumers, and warned of the risks of tax evasion or the sale of counterfeit goods.

It also called for the revision of the July 2000 law to take better account of auction companies claiming to be brokers.

Representatives of the regulator were not immediately available for comment. A spokeswoman for eBay referred to the written statement.

Australia’s history goes online

Digital communications agency, Reading Room, has redeveloped the National Archives of Australia (NAA) website to give the public online access to fascinating records on the history of Australia.

NAA selected Reading Room as its development partner from a competitive open tender process. Reading Room managed the technical development of the content management system, the conversion of static pages to XML and the integration of the front-end designs. Reading Room also ensured that the website was AA compliant.

Tom Voirol, managing director, Reading Room Australia said the main objective of the redevelopment was to implement a content management system to improve the ability of NAA to publish and maintain the website.

"When Reading Room was appointed in March 2006, the NAA website was six years old, contained 13,000 pages and was completely maintained in Dreamweaver. The redevelopment involved converting the 13,000 pages into XML based Tridion and publishing out to the website," he said.

Brad Headland, Website manager, National Archives of Australia, said Reading Room submitted the best tender response that most closely met the National Archives of Australia's requirements.

“It understood that the Archives delivered 93 percent of its access online and recommended Tridion Content Management System as the most suitable system to meet our needs," he said.

Tridion’s product provides complete web content management and content delivery capabilities, focusing on ease-of-use for all content contributors, site managers and power users.

The next phase of the NAA website will be to implement Tridion's Content Broker feature with the objective to enrich the front-end of the site further.

Pakistan to explore Irish IT sector

KARACHI (November 06 2007): Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) is organising networking events in Dublin, Ireland, from November 7 to 10. A statement here on Monday said that the event would be held in collaboration with the Embassy of Pakistan in Dublin, Ireland Pakistan Business Council (IPBC), Dublin Chamber of Commerce, Irish IT Industry and various other local partners.

It said that Ireland has emerged as the third leading global destination for ICT outsourcing activities after India and Canada and is focusing on South Asia due to the huge IT outsourcing potential of regional states including Pakistan.

"The visit would play a significant role in opening new vistas of collaboration between the companies of both the countries," an official of Pakistan Software Export Board remarked.

The statement pointed out that the PSEB delegation comprises of ten member companies, which are renowned in their respective areas of expertise. These companies include: ALPBusiness Services Management- distributors of highly skilled resources, execution capability, equipment and products to provide customers with low cost and highly profitable business solutions; Electronic Solutions Pakistan- specialising in E-Business and E-Government, retail, healthcare, resource management, and defence and military software; Msoft- providing new and innovative telecommunication products and services that increase business productivity and efficiency of their clients; Voxel Communications- provider of top notch offshore customer contact solutions; Acrologix-provider of comprehensive ERP solutions for Textile and Rice industries as well as industry solution provider for education, document management and archiving, mobile entertainment, B2B/B2C portals etc; Kraysis- providing software quality assurance services; Softech- recognised expert in developing complex software products for the capital and financial sector; EfroTech-providing services for the development of software-based web and client server solutions and media presentations; Sofizar-specialising in bringing relevant search engine traffic as well as creation of brand identity and iNVATERRA- providing efficiency optimisation services.

Cisco reports $9.6 billion sales in first quarter

KARACHI (November 20 2007): Cisco has reported net sales of 9.6 billion dollars in the first quarter that ended on October 27. Cisco is world-wide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.

Similarly net income on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis of YS 2.2 billion dollars or 0.35 dollars per share, and non-GAAP net income of 2.5 billion dollars or 0.40 dollars per share.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Chambers said: "We believe these strong results show that Cisco is well-positioned in terms of our vision, differentiated strategy and execution, and our ability to act upon key market transitions."

Cisco has acquired Navini networks, which is a pioneer and leader in mobile WiMax broadband wireless industry. This will result in many more Internet users who can use economically high speed Internet.-PR

EFF: Comcast continues to block P-to-P

Comcast continues to slow down customers' connections to some P-to-P (peer-to-peer) applications, using hacker-like techniques against its own subscribers, according to a report released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

But Comcast officials, first accused of blocking P-to-P application BitTorrent and other traffic in an October Associated Press story, insisted they're not stopping any Web traffic from getting to their customers. The cable broadband provider does manage its network, which would slow to a crawl if it did not manage bandwidth-hogging P-to-P connections during times of heavy congestion, a company official said.

At times, Comcast will delay P-to-P traffic, but the traffic will eventually go through, said Charlie Douglas, Comcast's director of corporate communications.

"Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any Web site or online application, including peer-to-peer services, and no one has demonstrated otherwise," Douglas said. "We engage in reasonable network management to serve all of our customers with a good Internet experience."

But the EFF defined Comcast's actions differently. Comcast, the second largest ISP (Internet service provider) in the U.S., uses a technique called packet forgery to slow some subscriber traffic, the EFF said in a report released Thursday. Comcast appears to be injecting RST, or reset, packets into customers' connections, causing connections to close, the EFF said.

The EFF's own tests confirmed tests run by the Associated Press and others that said Comcast was disrupting traffic, the group said. The packet forgery techniques can cause several problems, depending on the applications a customer is using, the EFF said.

"One objectionable aspect of Comcast's conduct is that they are spoofing packets -- that is, impersonating parties to an exchange of data," the EFF said in its report. "Comcast is essentially deploying against their own customers techniques more typically used by malicious hackers (this is doubtless how Comcast would characterize other parties that forged traffic to make it appear that it came from Comcast)."

Comcast's action is worse than if it dropped a proportion of packets during times of congestion, the EFF said. "Comcast is essentially behaving like a telephone operator that interrupts a phone conversation, impersonating the voice of each party to tell the other that 'this call is over, I'm hanging up,'" the group said.

The EFF report suggests that Comcast was not just slowing P-to-P traffic but also access to IBM's Lotus Notes e-mail and calendaring software. Douglas denied this, saying a bug that caused problems in Notes happened at the same that Comcast was accused of blocking Web traffic.

Comcast's actions have led supporters of net neutrality rules to renew calls for the U.S. Congress to pass a law prohibiting broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web traffic. Comcast's slowing of traffic creates a situation where Web innovators would have to ask permission for their applications to get unfettered access to broadband networks, the EFF said.

"The Internet has enabled a cascade of innovations precisely because any programmer -- whether employed by a huge corporation, a startup, or tinkering at home for fun -- has been able to create new protocols and applications that operate over TCP/IP, without having to obtain permission from anyone," the EFF said. "By arbitrarily using RST packets in a manner at odds with TCP/IP standards, Comcast threatens to Balkanize the open standards that are the foundation of the Internet."

In addition to the Comcast report, the EFF has published a guide for broadband customers to test if their providers are slowing traffic.

Privacy concerns prompt U-turn at Facebook

Social networking site Facebook has modified a controversial service that broadcast details of its users' online activities outside the site to their friends, following complaints about its privacy implications. The service now requires users to opt in before their actions are broadcast.

The service, called Beacon, feeds information about users' online activities at partner sites into a stream of "stories" made visible to other members of a user's social network. It also allows the partner sites to tack a "social ad" containing the user's photo onto the story, suggesting that the user endorses the partner's services.

Actions that can be broadcast in this way include purchasing a product, signing up for a service, or adding an item to a wish list. One of the first partners to use the service was Blockbuster: when a Facebook user added a movie to their queue on the blockbuster.com website, that information was transmitted to their Facebook contacts.

Last night, Facebook said it would ask users to opt in to the service before broadcasting details of their online activities to others. A separate opt-in question will be displayed on their Facebook profile page for each of the partner sites they use, it said. If they do not reply then the question will disappear after a time, only to reappear each time they use the partner site until they either allow or refuse the broadcasting of messages about their activity there.

When Beacon launched earlier this month, Facebook displayed an opt-out message at the end of each transaction on a partner site, inviting users to click if they didn't want details of their purchase or activity broadcast to their friends.

Facebook acknowledged that the initial opt-out messages were not displayed clearly enough or soon enough after the transaction. Users were sometimes moving away from a partner page before a notification could be fully displayed, Facebook said.

The company's assumption that users had seen and agreed to the notification by default angered online advocacy group MoveOn.org Civic Action, prompting it to set up an online petition against Beacon.

Although Facebook circulated information about its U-turn to news outlets, it has not yet informed its users directly of the change through either its corporate blog or the section of its Web site devoted to news releases.

Google working to make Street View anonymous

In the face of ethical concerns, Google is considering changes to its Street View Google Maps feature that would protect the privacy of those it photographs.

When Street View is rolled out in Europe, Google will alter Street View photos to make sure that faces and license plate numbers are no longer visible, and the company is also thinking about doing the same with the U.S. version of the product, said Jane Horvath, senior privacy counsel with Google.

Developed by Immersive Media, Street View lets users click on a city street and then see a panoramic photograph of the area. The pictures are taken by special 360-degree cameras roof-mounted on Volkswagen Beetles that cruise around town, constantly snapping photographs. The photos are often so clear that people on the street can be identified.

Soon after its May launch, photographs of scantily clad women and men apparently entering adult book stores or strip clubs appeared, and privacy advocates complained that the Street View was invasive. Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Kevin Bankston was photographed by the service and was among those who complained.

Google responded by creating a way for people to remove their photos, but in many other countries the company will have to take the more aggressive privacy measures. "In other jurisdictions ... like Canada and the E.U., when we launch our product there, we'll be under an obligation to ensure that faces are not recognizable, nor are license tags," Horvath said at a Thursday discussion at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. "As we launch those products we will be thinking within our product teams whether this is something that we'd like to do within the U.S. also."

Street View maps are available for 15 U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Miami.

In the U.S., Google can legally publish photographs taken in public places without securing permission from people who happen to pop up in the shots, but this practice violates privacy laws in many other countries.

And even if it's legal, some may still be uncomfortable with the photographs, Horvath admitted.

"It's sort of that 'ick' feeling that something makes you feel uncomfortable," she said. "Our products are not static and we're always open to changing them to make sure our users feel comfortable and trust us with their information."

"I think this calls into question the whole idea of whether privacy is something that needs to be regulated by law or if there's this other concept of privacy that we need to look at, which is the right to autonomy."

Cloudsmith service pushes 'virtual distros'

A new company, Cloudsmith, has created a Web-based service meant to let developers access and exchange "virtual distros," or custom configurations, of open-source software.

The service, now in beta, doesn't store any code, just information about where the various components in a given distribution are located. It also provides a utility for collecting and assembling the various pieces.

Cloudsmith's goal is to greatly speed up and ease the process of creating open-source distributions, according to the company, which is based in New York.

One early adopter is Eteration, a company in Turkey and Germany that builds Lomboz, an open-source Java application development tool. Naci Dai, Lomboz's chief scientist, said Lomboz's customers often require custom distributions tuned for their IT environments.

"Many of our users combine our software with other open technologies to build their applications; they may choose servers from the Apache foundation, or use a portal from OW2 etc.," Dai wrote in an e-mail. "Cloudsmith allowed us to capture the configuration our users prefer in the form of Virtual Distros. ... We can update them by simply updating the virtual distro.

"We are hoping that one day this approach becomes the only way of packaging and distributing our software," he added, saying that decision will depend on user feedback.

Dai praised Cloudsmith's technology but said it remains somewhat untapped. "We hope to see more examples and users and define new and better ways to share software."

Cloudsmith's business model is still evolving. Right now, the service is free. But after the beta period ends, Cloudsmith will offer a subscription model to cater to customers who wish to share with only certain other users.

The company is not aiming its marketing efforts at chief information officers. "We are a developer-focused kind of company," said CEO Mitch Sonies. "If you don't have the developers at the grassroots level you won't get anywhere."

To that end, most of the early interest in Cloudsmith is coming from Eclipse developers. "Which is great, we love that community," Sonies said. "But we will do some things in the very near term that will show we're not about any one technology."