Some of the most promising set of mobile apps being built today use a cell phone’s camera and GPS to overlay data onto the real world. In other words, instead of looking at a browser, you look through the camera lens at the real world around you and information is layered on top of the view projected on the small screen. (It’s not just a viewfinder, you know). Last year at TechCrunch 50, the Sekai Camera demo from Japan that does this blew away the audience. More recently, Layar showed us similar augmented reality apps for the Android phone. Now IBM has its own augmented reality mobile app for Wimbledon called Seer Android (see demo in the video above).
Larry Ellison has always wanted to be the Steve Jobs of the enterprise. With this morning’s announcement that Oracle will buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion, he took a big step towards making Oracle more of a soup-to-nuts provider of enterprise technology. With Sun, he will now be able to build and package together everything from chips and servers to operating systems, Java middleware, databases, and enterprise applications.
Like Apple, Oracle wants to take away complexity for its customers and bundle the entire IT stack neatly together so that it works without hassles and is optimized for Oracle’s software. With this deal, Ellison has come full circle from his early-1990s mantra of “best-of-breed” systems, which he abandoned long ago. Rather than look like Apple with its dedication to making the perfect product, Oracle just became IBM. It will use Sun’s existing server market share to push Oracle databases and software, and bundle it all with IT services. Sure, it will continue to support Dell and HP and even rival enterprise software, but the sales pitch will be around the bundled product. If that turns out to be a superior product at a lower price, then both Oracle and customers will win out. But to the extent that it takes away choice from IT buyers, it could be an even tougher sell than convincing them to give up their beloved Blackberries for an iPhone.
Looks like Sun Microsystems is open to renewing acquisition talks with International Business Machines (IBM) if the latter makes a stronger commitment to actually closing the deal, according to Bloomberg sources.
Discussions have stalled, still according to the sources, and both companies are now waiting for the other to make a move.
The information provided by the two unnamed sources implies that Sun withdrew exclusive negotations with IBM because there were apparently no guarantees that they would ultimately stick with the takeover if the companies encountered barriers such as an antitrust review. So basically Sun is saying: if you’re going to talk the talk, you’d better be prepared to walk the walk.
Oh noes! IBM withdrew its $7 billion bid to buy Sun Microsystems. The company has no other offers outstanding, which may mean that the well-known and well-loved Unix server supplier will have to go it alone in an uncertain economy. One interesting point, from NYT:
The Sun board did not reject the offer outright, but wanted certain guarantees that the I.B.M. side considered “onerous,” according to that person.
IBM dropped its price to $9.40 and the requirements included changing the management team and the movement/removal of some senior employees. . Sun’s stock dropped to $8.49 last Friday.
With the end of the first quarter of the 2009 almost here, even the strongest companies companies are making last-minute layoffs to shave costs. Today, layoffs were announced across the tech sector, from IBM to Google to Amazon. The biggest layoffs came from IBM, where 5,000 people are losing their jobs in the U.S.. Amazon cut 210 people at three distribution centers in Nevada, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Google also announced layoffs of 200 people from sales and marketing (so far, engineers have been spared). In all three cases, the job cuts amounted to roughly one percent of each company’s global workforce. The New York Times also announced a 5 percent cut of its newsroom business operations, or 100 people.
It is not as if the payroll reductions will help save the quarter or even have a material impact on it. But the companies can point to the measures during their conference calls with investors and analysts and project the savings going forward.
Microsoft’s Steven Martin has ironically blown the whistle on an attempt at an “open” coalition that freezes out certain companies. Ironic in that Microsoft and IBM played this game years ago with the WS-I, an industry standards group that pointedly stonewalled Sun Microsystems’ involvement before caving under media pressure.
In a Google Groups post Introducing the Open Cloud Manifesto, Rueven Cohen describes an effort involving “several of the largest technology companies and organizations” to “draw a line in the sand.”
We are still working on the first version of the manifesto which will be
published Monday, March 30th with a goal of being ratified by the greater
cloud community. Given the nature of this document we have attempted to be
as inclusive as possible inviting most of the major names in technology to
participate in the initial draft. The intention of this first draft is to
act as a line in the sand, a starting point for others to get involved.
That being said this manifesto is not specifically targeting any one company
or industry but instead is intended to engage a dialogue on the
opportunities and benefits of fostering an open cloud ideology for everyone.
As inclusive as possible? Not targeted at any one company? Engage in a dialogue? What a load of crap that is. It’s the same back room cigar-smoke-filled scam of the good old days when Web Services first began its inexorable move to reshape computing.
The consolidation in enterprise technology is upon us. Once mighty Sun Microsystems is now reportedly in talks to be acquired by IBM for a mere $6.5 billion. That is two quarters of revenues for Sun. If you factor in the $2.6 billion in cash and short term investments on Sun’s balance sheet, the true offer is closer to $4 billion. Sun’s shares jumped this morning 65 percent.
Sun’s main Solaris server business has been suffering for years from the onslaught of cheaper open-source Linux servers, which it now offers as well. But Sun still holds big presence in key industries. The play for IBM is to consolidate its server market share in the face of increased competition from HP (which bought IT consulting giant EDS last summer), and now Cisco (which is trying to expand into the server and storage markets). Sun’s commitment to open standards also meshes well with IBM’s philosophy. Remember, it owns MySQL.
IBM is advancing its aggressive cloud computing strategy with a string of announcements this week. The most recent was IBM’s partnership with Amazon Web Services to allow access of its software to solution providers using Amazon’s cloud computing applications. The partnerships offers pay-as-you-go access to development and production versions of IBM Information Management database servers, IBM Lotus content management, and IBM WebSphere portal and middleware products through Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service. The partnership makes sense because Amazon has been an early leader in the cloud computing sphere, and IBM is making strides towards becoming the master of cloud computing. Microsoft is readying its own cloud-computing software service, Windows Azure, that will allow developers to create services and applications that are supported by Microsoft’s data centers.
IBM will be unveiling a number of new cloud computing technologies at its CIO Leadership Exchange in Shanghai and its Pulse Conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday with networking giant and Cisco-rival Juniper Networks by its side. We reported last summer that Juniper is doing a good job of making inroads on Cisco’s turf, and this partnership with IBM is a sign of Juniper’s continued strength in the cloud computing sphere, an area where Cisco is also hoping to make its mark.
When twitter recently added a “Suggested Friends” feature, I was more than a little disappointed. Unlike Facebook’s “People You May Know” feature, no explanation is provided for why these people were suggested.
In an enterprise setting, the most valuable people are the connectors: “The people who know which people know what”, according to Alan Lepofsky.
The larger the organization, the more likely someone else is working on the same problem. And the less likely you’ll find them.
While touring IBM’s Innovation lab at Lotusphere last week, I was surprised to see IBM is also tackling this problem with their “Social Networks & Discovery” project (SaND for short). And it looked FAR better than anything I’ve seen previously.
When Apple hired away Mark Papermaster from IBM as its new senior vice president of hardware engineering for devices, IBM struck back with a lawsuit attempting to bar him from switching jobs. Citing his non-compete clause, IBM convinced a judge to order Papermaster to stop working at Apple until the dispute was resolved. IBM even brought Papermaster’s children into it.
Well, now he can finally go make future iPhones and iPods for Apple. The two companies have settled out of court. It kind of makes you wonder why companies even bother with non-compete clauses in employment contracts, especially when they are overly broad. More often than not, they are not worth the paper they are written on.
LinkedIn has partnered with IBM to create a new plugin that integrates its professional social network into Lotus Notes, a popular business desktop client that includes Email, calendar, and IM functionality. The plugin is making its debut to the public at Lotusphere, with plans for its release in the first half of 2009.
For users who spend much of their day ‘living’ in their Email client, the new plugin could be a welcome addition. Its primary purpose is to display information relevant to the people in your Emails, as well as providing a handy way to browse through some of LinkedIn’s most oft-used features (like your news feed and search). However, the plugin does not yet automatically look up the contacts mentioned in your Emails - you’ll still have to click on their names or use the pre-populated search to look them up (automatic lookup is planned for a future release).
Next month is the annual Lotusphere conference. IBM is giving two free tickets to TC readers–leave a comment saying why you’d like to go to Lotusphere, and we’ll pick the winners by Monday morning. (Note: Passes cover conference registration only, not travel/hotel.)
Few pieces of software are as polarizing as Lotus Notes. When my last job forced me to use Notes, I found the interface clunky, the graphics Win 95′esqe, and the workflow architecture non-intuitive. Granted, I was using Version 6.5 (Notes is now on Release 8), but even so I found it frustratingly unproductive. And I’m clearly not alone.
Which leaves me wondering–has IBM’s Lotus Notes lost touch with the user-centric web 2.0 world?
To answer these questions, I interviewed Kevin Cavanaugh, IBM’s VP in charge of the Notes/Domino group. Also joining us was Ed Brill, IBM’s Director of Messaging and Collaboration.
Can’t afford a ticket to China to go visit the Forbidden City? Well, now all you need is your computer. IBM, which is a big believer in virtual worlds, and China’s Palace Museum have created an exact replica of the 178-acre Forbidden City. After working meticulously for three years to recreate every building and thousands of major artifacts, the virtual Forbidden City is now available for download (for Windows, Mac, or Linux). It’s free, although, I warn you the Mac version, at least, is a massive 275MB file.
Once inside, you can choose an avatar, dress him or her up in Qing Dynasty-era robes, take virtual tours, play Go with computer-controlled characters, call up maps, explore buildings and objects that allow you to click for deeper information. The virtual world was built on a gaming platform from Garage Games called Torque. ( I guess OpenSim wasn’t good enough. No word on whether it will be interoperable with Second Life).
Jajah, a popular VoIP service provider, has released a new English/Chinese translation service called JAJAH.Babel just in time for the Olympic Games. The service, which was developed in conjunction with IBM, allows users to call a free number to get a near-instant translation of spoken sentences. The service isn’t meant for voice calls abroad - instead, it’s a handheld translator. After speaking your message into the phone, you hand it to the person you’re speaking with, and the phone spits out the translated message.
Using the service is fairly simple, and should work from any phone line:
How does JAJAH.Babel work? From English to Chinese or in reverse:
Dial JAJAH.Babel from any phone. U.S. local access number: +1.718.513.2969
Choose which language you want your message translated into (either English to Chinese or Chinese to English)
Say your message and press #
You will be able to confirm that your message was properly understood by the system.
The message will automatically be played back in Chinese. If you wish, simply hand your phone to the other person or put the phone on loudspeaker so they hear the message.
The other person can then record a message in Chinese, following the steps above, and you will hear their message in English.
To help test the service I recruited TechCrunch intern Matthew Schulz, who is fluent in Chinese. His conclusion was that it worked surprisingly well. The translation from English to Chinese sounded a little bit awkward, but the meaning was obvious. As for speech detection, the service had some trouble when he spoke Chinese in his normal tone, but when he enunciated a bit more than usual the results were almost perfect.
For now, the service is limited to translations between English and Chinese Mandarin, but the companies plan to release new languages in the near future. You can get more information about the service along with more local access numbers here.
Take a look at the video above (which oddly reminds me of the early 90s) and you’ll see that IBM has taken a page from Evernote’s book.
Its research labs have been working on a project codenamed “PENSIEVE” that promises to algorithmically construct digital address books from photographs of business cards and the people they represent.
While not production ready for at least another year, PENSIEVE will get rid of that stack of business cards sitting unhelpfully on your desk. Instead of chipmunking business cards away, PENSIEVE users can take photos of them with their camera phones upon receipt. Later, when they plug those phones into their computers, PENSIEVE will analyze the photos and extract contact information - name, phone number, address, etc. - and associate their data with any photos you took of people on location. That data gets integrated into your digital address book, making it searchable, shareable and generally more useful.
IBM won’t offer PENSIEVE directly to consumers; the company plans to distribute the service through its telco partners. Pricing details are also not available, since they are bound to be determined by the mobile providers themselves.
We’re told the service will sync with common address books (Outlook, etc). Let’s just hope the data doesn’t get into the wrong hands.
Virtual worlds like Second Life have a silo issue—they are virtual worlds unto themselves. Today, Linden Lab (which operates Second Life) and IBM announced that they have successfully bridged two virtual worlds, with avatars from Second Life successfully “teleporting” to an entirely different metaverse based on an OpenSim server.
The two companies have been working together on the Open Grid Protocol to allow for interoperability between virtual worlds. In a post on the Second Life blog, Hamilton Linden explains:
An open standard for interoperability based on the Open Grid Protocol would allow users to cross freely from one world to another, just as they can go from one Web site to another on the Internet today.
Here’s a video showing the avatars “teleporting” from one world (i.e. set of computer servers) to another:
Interoperability between virtual worlds is fine, and is definitely a step towards breaking down the walled gardens they are increasingly finding themselves in. But ultimately it is the wrong answer. What we really need is interoperability between virtual worlds and the Web.
Otherwise, virtual worlds will remain isolated in their alternate universe. If you can’t link to it from the regular Web (and vice versa), it doesn’t exist. That is why virtual 3D worlds are going to come to the browser. One startup, Vivaty (which launched in public beta earlier today), is already creating these browser-based virtual environments, where each place and object is a regular URL.
These still pale in comparison to what you can do in Second Life, but they will get better. And being connected to the rest of the Web will ensure that they never have any interoperability issues. The Web will just become more 3D over time. Will Second Life join the Web, or will its legacy architecture (built when there was no other choice) prevent it from doing so?
Who do you trust more, Google or Toyota? The answer might depend on where you live. In its annual corporate reputation survey of 60,000 people worldwide, the Reputation Institute finds that Google scores highest in the U.S., but is No. 2 worldwide after Toyota. On the global list, Ikea is No. 3, Johnson & Johnson is No. 5, and Walt Disney is No. 12. Apple doesn’t even make it into the top 25 (see below).
Using the same data, Forbes breaks out the top 75 companies in the U.S. In the U.S. alone, Apple is No. 17, HP is No. 18, Intel is No. 19, Dell is No. 25, IBM is No. 35 and Microsoft comes in at No. 43. Bringing up the rear is Motorola at No. 50, Cisco at No. 55, CBS at No. 62, and American Express at No. 75. (See partial list below).
These rankings are based on an opinion poll, but they just don’t seem right to me. How can Dell be No. 25, with all of its customer service issues last year? And why is American Express, which regularly ranks as one of the most admired companies in the world and one of the top brands, dead last?
It is instructive to compare some of these rankings to the top 100 brands, as measured by an estimate of brand value. (See below). Google, again is No.1. Microsoft is No. 3, IBM is No. 6, Apple is No. 7, Toyota is No. 12, HP is No. 16, American Express is No. 20, Intel is No. 27, and Dell is No. 41. About the only company the two rankings agree on is HP. These brand rankings feel like a better measure of reputation to me than the Reputation Institute’s survey.
What do you think? Take our own poll. Vote for the companies you trust or admire the most. Multiple answers are allowed.
Editor’s note: I put in BMW twice by mistake in our poll, so please only vote once for BMW if you vote for it at all. I’m keeping the existing poll up rather than put up a new one and throwing away the votes that have already been cast.
Israeli startup Zend Technologies has fired 25 percent of its R&D team (at least ten people), as well as others across the company, in an attempt to become cash flow positive, says a source close to the company. Zend offers its own distribution of PHP, the popular open-source scripting language for Web applications. It sells software and support services around that (just as Red Hat does with its distribution of Linux). We have an e-mail out to the company asking for a comment.
Update: A spokesperson from the company’s PR firm says: “Yes, I can confirm that Zend made the layoffs, but we cannot comment on the numbers or reasons for the action.”
The job cuts could be an attempt to pretty itself up for a sale. Back in 2006, Oracle wanted to buy it for $100 million to $200 million. It might still be interested. IBM, which already one of Zend’s strategic partners, might also want to take a look.
Another partner is Microsoft, which has already integrated Zend into Windows Server. Thanks to Zend, programmers who don’t want to be bothered with .Net can use PHP instead to create applications that run on Windows Server. If Microsoft ever buys Yahoo, picking up Zend would make even more sense since Yahoo is littered with PHP apps.
Amazon’s Web Services experienced another hiccup today. Early this morning, its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) went down for about an hour for at least some customers in the U.S. This follows a major outage of its S3 storage service in February. Companies big and small use EC2 as a virtual data center to run jobs on Amazon’s computers. Customers began reporting problems on the EC2 developer forum at 1:51 AM PT. The problem seemed to be resolved about an hour and a half later.
Amazon does not guarantee 100 percent uptime for its Web Services, although it does strive to achieve that. And data centers go down all the time, no matter who is hosting your data. But more and more companies are relying on Amazon to be able to scale their computing resources on demand and do it cheaply by paying only for what they need. Many Web startups are building their entire businesses on top of Amazon’s Web Services, and even an hour of unavailability is unacceptable. At least this one happened during the middle of the night.
The outage is a reminder that, as Amazon CTO Werner Vogels said last week after a speech he gave about uncertainty, “Everything fails all the time.” And it comes on the eve of what could be Google’s entry into the on-demand computing infrastructure business with the expected announcement of its BigTable cloud database service tonight. As big tech companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, and others start to compete around web services, reliability will be one of the main features they will compete around. (The other one will be price).
Amazon’s Web Services experienced another hiccup today. Early this morning, its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) went down for about an hour for at least some customers in the U.S. This follows a 
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