Microsoft made a mistake with its investment in Facebook. Just because Google has made a business out of Internet advertising doesn’t mean that a traditional software company is going to do well here, too.

Facebook is likely to be seen as Microsoft’s ace in the Web 2.0 Wars. Google gave birth to the “online OS” by providing many of the applications you might expect to find in installable form. Today, others, such as Facebook, are growing exponentially because they offer much more than just “another social medium.” Yet as great as the little widget-like applications that everyone is going nuts over at Facebook are, at its core, Facebook can and will become yesterday’s news someday. Here’s why:

• Pull the plug. Seriously, just pull the plug on the connectivity to that platform and watch all of that Web 2.0 nonsense deflate right before your eyes. Whether it be a localized issue with being able to connect to any specific portal/service/ or worse, an international hiccup in the world’s ability to connect to the Web 2.0 company. It could happen…

• Besides eyeballs, what is the real value that Facebook is providing? Exactly, it’s a roundabout way to reach ad dollars. At the end of the day, Facebook joining Microsoft’s own portfolio will be great for Facebook but it’ll do very little for a company like Microsoft. Why? Microsoft is the new IBM as Facebook is the new Yahoo! (1990s era). Microsoft knows enterprise, but it has seriously lost its traction with most home users in almost every sense of the word. This is just a fact; people have been burned badly with high MS Office prices and Vista incompatibilities. Microsoft needs to focus on one business at a time as far as I’m concerned.
• Microsoft needs to understand that the way it develops software is dying. This doesn’t mean Microsoft will cease to exist in the near future, but the closed source mindset with mobile OS is taking its last breath. Same goes with Facebook. As a trend, sure, it’s cool. Yet to dump millions into it is just plain reaching for the stars and proof of a stale Redmond development scene.

This article has been republished with the kind permission of our friends at OSWeekly.com. For more computer news, go give ‘em a look or Subscribe to OSWeekly.com’s RSS Feed!

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OLPC is a lost cause. It’s amazing how an otherwise interesting project with headline-grabbing mission could spiral out of control with disastrous results. The project has always had noble intentions. I can’t fault it for that. Any time an organization is giving back to the community and contributing back to society, it’s a good organization in my book. However, the management is ludicrous. Not only did it not realize the magnitude of the ramifications for changing its mission, but it couldn’t pinpoint its ultimate desire either. The latest is its search for the CEO to run OLPC as a non-profit business, similar to Microsoft. Great aspirations!

Seriously, Microsoft is what it looks up to? Good luck with that! How about Google? After all, it’s a well managed company with record performance and brilliant talent. I wouldn’t be so ignorant as to dismiss Microsoft completely, but it isn’t what it used to be. So, really, let’s try to steer this in the right direction, if nothing else.

Then comes another gem. “Management, administration, and details are my weaknesses. I’m much better at the vision, big-picture side of the house,” CEO Nicholas Negroponte told Businessweek. He adds that he’s looking for someone who will “view the world as a mission, not a market.” He’s really annoying with his ignorant statements and unnecessary disputes with others (remember his back-and-forth conflict with Intel?). And would he please stop harping about the vision already? We get it. The world gets it. You want to provide access to technology for unfortunate, resource-lacking children. Now, leave. Your job is done, and you are just making the entire OLPC team look like a bunch of miserable, conflict-loving superstars.

Not to mention, what’s up with “view the world as a mission, not a market” statement? You can’t be serious. Any self-respecting CEO must look at it from a capitalistic standpoint and that means looking at, defining, and analyzing markets. Globally, everything must be divided into markets to make OLPC a successful, non-profit business. How difficult is that to understand? At least he’s right about his weaknesses. I feel sorry for the CEO that comes on board and shares responsibility with Negroponte. He’ll ultimately get in the CEO’s way and end up hurting OLPC.

My recommendation to OLPC: Let’s thank Negroponte for his contributions and wave him good-bye. His needs a permanent break before he runs OLPC into the ground with his silly and contradicting comments and vision.

[Gundeep Hora]

This article has been republished with the kind permission of our friends at CoolTechZone. For more news about the gadgets that make the world go ’round, go give ‘em a look or Subscribe to CoolTechZone’s RSS Feed!

Google Inc., expanding its efforts at providing software that helps users create and post their own materials on the Internet, has acquired a California startup that develops online collaboration tools known as wikis.

The announcement came Tuesday through separate postings at Google’s and JotSpot Inc.’s Web journals. Terms were not disclosed.

JotSpot chief executive Joe Kraus said JotSpot would be able to tap into the Internet search leader’s large user base and robust data centers capable of handling any growth.

“Our vision has always been to take wikis out of the land of the nerds and bring it to the largest possible audience,” Kraus said in an interview. “There’s no larger audience that you can reach than one you can reach through Google.” [Source: AP via CTV]

Tags: google, wiki, jotspot, joe kraus

Microsoft Corp. today plans to release a renamed, updated version of its small-business accounting program that it said makes better use of online services.

The Redmond company also plans to debut a new, free version of the program for simpler or smaller businesses.

The free product, called Office Accounting Express 2007, provides full cash- and accrual-based accounting, Microsoft said.

Tags: microsoft, accounting, free, office accounting express

Nestor E. Arellano of IT World Canada writes:

If you seek to create a consolidated e-government service network, coveting your neighbour’s IT assets may be a good way to begin, according to one high-profile American CIO.

Teresa Takai, CIO of the State of Michigan, said one way she keeps her network up to date is by “stealing [ideas] from others, especially the Canadians.”

During her keynote on Wednesday at the 2006 Showcase Ontario in Toronto, Takai said Canadian federal, provincial, and municipal governments are leaders in consolidating automated services.
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If you listen to Intel’s press releases, everything is rosy and with the launch of quad-core processors in the fourth quarter of this year, everything will be back to rights in the world. Too bad the approximately 10,000 employees to be laid off next Tuesday won’t be around to see it happen.
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I’ve spent a few weeks thinking about Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, the premise of his popular new book and his suggested implications for business in the future. Finally, a few days ago I read Lee Gomes’ terrific column in the Wall Street Journal where he debunks some of Anderson’s statistical analysis, which really helped me clarify my own thoughts on the book.

Let me say that I don’t disagree for a minute with the idea of the long tail and find evidence of it even on my own Web site, but where I diverge from what’s suggested in the book is that I find it difficult to believe the premise that “hits” won’t be important and that the era of Best Sellers is over.
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Affiliate sales account for over one billion dollars in revenue last year, according to the folk at Marketing Sherpa, so why on Earth would I suggest that maybe, just maybe, affiliate programs aren’t a smart basis for a sustainable online business?

In a word: differentiators. Successful businesses in the long term have “sustainable differentiators” so that they cannot only compete effectively today, but also in the long term. If you’re selling the exact same product for the exact same price as dozens or hundreds of other sites, how the heck can you possibly differentiate?
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Maybe it’s just that I’m a huge fan of the World Cup and have been known in the past to shut down my business during the last few games of what is easily the most popular sporting event in the world, but I am appalled by the sophomoric response of the Boing Boing team to a letter from a law firm representing the online rights to the games.

I freely admit that Baker and McKenzie, the law firm in question, could have written a better letter or one that was a bit less threatening, but having received plenty of letters from law firms myself, this just goes with the territory. There’s a reason that the legal phrase for how law firms must protect trademark is to “aggressively pursue,” for example.

But even the way that Boing Boing talks about the 2006 FIFA World Cup, easily the most popular sporting event in the world, reflects poorly on the blogosphere and reminds us why it is that blogging hasn’t exploded onto the corporate scene with anywhere near the zeal of entrepreneurs and small businesses…
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I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it on the weblog run by the Google AdWords folk, but apparently, yes, coming to a site near you - very soon - will be advertisements that will include video content, all as part of the AdWords network (e.g., if you’re subscribed to Google AdSense and you allow image advertisements that are sufficiently large for the video box to fit, you might just suddenly start getting video ads, too).

Me, I think it’ll be very cool and an interesting example of how Google is really pushing advertising into a hybrid space where television and the Internet are surprisingly similar, perhaps one day completely converged.
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It’s an all-too-common phenomenon at workshops, seminars and trade events, and even creeps into the most critical of business meetings: Boring PowerPoint Syndrome. I predict that even Gnomedex will suffer from this dreadful malady!

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Those interminable dull slides that have 8-15 bullet points on them, each smaller than you can read, all against a plain white background and all with too many transitions and too much glitz to let you really focus on the important part of the presentation: the speaker.

Of course, I’ll admit that not every public speaker can command the attention of their audience, so for many the PowerPoint slides serve just as much as a crutch, as a safety net, as they serve as a helpful reminder of the key points that the presenter wants to enforce. But if that’s the case, then surely you’d agree with me that the problem is with the presenter’s skills and the presentation, and that the PowerPoint is just a sort of virtual attention flypaper, dangling out there and pulling eyeballs (and brains) away from what’s being said and off into Neverland, down the rabbit hole of daydreams, or, in modern events, into the Internet via that handy Wi-Fi connection.
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AOL, once THE largest ISP in the world, has been shrinking over the past years as more and more people get access to other avenues to the Internet. AOL itself hasn’t helped matters, with its isolationist and sometimes bizarre ideas of what customers will accept. Today’s news doesn’t sit well.
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Microsoft Corp. today announced it has acquired Vexcel Corp., a worldwide leader in photogrammetry, imagery, and remote sensing technologies. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

This deal, the second in the past six months for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth business unit, was done to enhance the talent, technologies, products and services dedicated to fulfilling Microsoft’s broad vision for best-of-breed local search and mapping solutions for consumers, businesses and government.

Founded in 1985, Vexcel is a multinational company with its headquarters in Boulder, Colo., and offices in Austria, Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Vexcel employees become Microsoft employees and will be part of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth business unit.
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Gee, do you suppose someone on staff just counts poorly, or could this be the result of plain ol’ corporate greed gone wild? The Associated Press (via BusinessWeek) reports:

A judge has approved a $2.65 billion class-action settlement of claims that advertising revenue was counted in a fraudulent manner prior to the merger of America Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc.

U.S. District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram signed a ruling approving the deal Thursday. She had given the settlement tentative approval in September 2005.

The settlement resulted from lawsuits brought by shareholders who complained that AOL improperly accounted for dozens of advertising transactions, inflating revenue for 15 quarters between 1998 and 2002…

Tags: aol, time warner, corporate greed, shirley wohl kram, class action settlement

From CNET’s CTIA 2006 coverage: PayPal [has] launched a new mobile payment service for cell phones that will enable customers to pay for goods and services or donate to charities by sending PayPal a text message. PayPal will then call the customer back for confirmation before it makes the money transfer. The service sits on top of the mobile infrastructure, so it is compatible with all carriers.

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A lot of people don’t give a second thought to the lingering effects of discarded electronics once the trash gets hauled away from the curb, but one hopes the manufacturers of such goods are a little more mindful of such things. Matt Slagle of the Associated Press (via ABC News) writes:

Dell Inc. plans to triple the amount of electronics it can recycle by 2009, the company said in an annual report outlining its environmental goals and achievements.

The announcement comes as Dell and other computer makers, bowing to demands from consumers and environmental groups, have become increasingly sensitive to the safe handling of the toxic brew of materials such as cadmium, mercury, and lead contained in many electronics.

Dell’s updated recycling efforts, highlighted in the Round Rock, Texas-based company’s 83-page “Sustainability Report,” were issued Wednesday in Oakland, Calif., at an environmental business conference. Dell has been issuing such reports since 1998…

What’s next? Will the United States of America change its name to USA? Should we start calling the United Kingdom the UK? Maybe this would be a bigger deal if AOL declared itself a sovereign nation and hoisted its logo high above its home offices. A portent of civil war? Ready, AIM, fire! The Associated Press (via The Seattle Post-Intelligencer) reports:

It’s official: America Online Inc. is now known simply as AOL. In an expected move, Time Warner Inc.’s Internet unit said Monday it has renamed itself; it also changed from being a corporation to a limited liability company.

“Our company long ago accomplished the mission implied by our old name. We literally got America online,” said Jon Miller, chairman and chief executive of AOL LLC. “Our new corporate identity better reflects our expanded mission - to make everyone’s online experience better.”

He added that consumers already know the service by its initials…

Tags: aim, aol, america online, limited liability, aol llc

This is just as much a backend infrastructure story as it is a sheer wicked functionality story: In a story about a completely different topic, Wal-Mart let spill that it’s working on a solution that will let people take their cellphones to a Wal-Mart photo center and print the pictures off their phones with zero fuss.

Here’s the quote I bumped into on the subject:

“Wal-Mart is working on a solution to allow camera phone users to upload images from their phones to nearby locations for printing.”

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This is the kind of stuff that’s impossible to make up: consumer goods giant Proctor and Gamble has introduced a chatbot, a program that communicates via instant messaging with potential customers. And who are the customers for a deodorant? Well, if you guessed adults, you’re terribly wrong. This chatbot is aimed squarly at teen and tween girls, and presents what I can only say, as a parent, is a darn insulting and cloyingly stereotyped view of what girls are interested in.

But let’s let SecretSparkle talk for itself. (You can play along on this game by connecting via AIM to SecretSparkle or via MSN Messenger to secretsparkle@botmetro.net.
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DEVO doesn’t have the monopoly on high-tech spuddery, anymore! Shannon Dininny of the Associated Press (via The Washington Post) writes:

Curt Morris, Port of Quincy board president, stands Thursday, March 23, 2006, on a bluff overlooking a new residential development on the banks of the Columbia River west of Quincy, Wash. The city of Quincy has received two proposals from Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to build massive data storage centers in the area, which has also drawn the interest of residential developers. (AP Photo/Shannon Dininny)

QUINCY, WASH. - In the heart of potato country, a high-tech boom is taking place. Technology giants Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are planning to build massive data storage centers amid the sagebrush and farm fields of rural central Washington.

The draw appears to be the region’s relatively cheap land, inexpensive hydropower and wide-open space, and although neither agreement has been finalized, local officials are hopeful that Grant County will become more than the nation’s leading supplier of spuds.

“This could be a real boon to Quincy and to Grant County,” said Curt Morris, Port of Quincy board president. “It’s bringing renewed optimism to the people of the town, especially the business owners. We’re interested to see where it takes us…“