WSJ - D: All Things Digital

Is it just BoomTown, or is it odd that the new leaders of Yahoo are suddenly all the old Microsoft guys whom once high-flying Yahoo execs bested soundly back in the day?

I love digital irony!

In any case, Yahoo (YHOO) just hired yet another former Microsoft exec–this time, John Matheny (pictured here), whose last job at the software giant was as the GM of its Windows Phone App Studio.

He is now SVP of Yahoo’s communications products and communities unit.

Yahoo confirmed the appointment of Matheny after I called for comment.

According to his profile on LinkedIn. Matheny was also GM of Premium Mobile Experiences and MSN Platforms & Services at Microsoft (MSFT).

At Yahoo, he seems to be replacing Jason Titus, who left Yahoo recently, in what now appears to be a major reshuffling of the staff by new Chief Products Head Blake Irving.

A former high-ranking Microsoft online exec, Irving has been putting in several ex-colleagues in place at Yahoo, as he firms his grip on the organization.

That includes hiring Bill Shaughnessy, who is now SVP of Product Management at Yahoo.

The continuing churn in the leadership ranks is causing increasing distress inside reorg-weary Yahoo, according to many execs I have spoken to recently.

But, at least in this case, it’s an arrival, rather than yet another departure. as Yahoo struggles to right itself and reestablish a culture of innovation.

My guess for the next Softie to move to the ‘Hoo: Brian Arbogast, Corporate VP of Mobile Services, who just left Microsoft. Arbogast was, of course, a close colleague of Irving’s at Microsoft.

By Andy Keane, General Manager, Tesla High Performance Computing, Nvidia

It may not be obvious, but if you’ve checked the weather today, ridden in a car or an airplane, made a phone call, or used any number of consumer products, down to the clothing you wear and the detergents that keep them clean, you’ve relied on a supercomputer.

Virtual design, forecasting and simulations are now essential for smarter science, faster innovation and better product development. Which means that High Performance Computing (HPC) is critical to U.S. competitiveness and standards of living.
But the traditional CPU-based technology that once put America in the lead is now the anchor holding us back. Our legacy computing is no longer scaling cost-effectively and power-efficiently enough. The effects of this lost leadership will soon be severely felt in every aspect of American business and economic life unless we decide to do something about it.
It’s past time for private industry and the public sector to get our HPC act together, before other nations steal the show.
We want safer oil and gas discovery, workable alternative fuels, lower emission combustion engines, more efficient electricity production and smart grid management. We know we need to forecast weather, understand climate change and design micro-organisms to absorb environmental wastes. Doctors want better tumor models and surgical decision support, and they’re racing to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases like Alzheimer’s. Across these and any number of medical, manufacturing, services and research applications, our ability to design better, safer and more cost-effective processes and products and find the energy to make and move them–all of which generate business activity, domestic jobs and economic growth–depends on our HPC capacity.

So, you’d think we’d stay on top of our game. Instead, we’re getting jumped by moves we invented.

From nearly a standing start in 2005, by this November China is expected to have developed the world’s fastest computer–based, ironically, on our own American hybrid parallel processors that are far more cost-effective and power-efficient than traditional CPU chips. Tokyo Institute of Technology, CSIRO in Australia and CEA France are similarly focused. They’re not hamstrung by legacy CPU-based computing. They’re jumping straight into next-generation, hybrid HPC by adding graphics processing units (GPUs) to drive far better price, efficiency and performance. The result? Our competitors are securing the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost.

Typically, where technology leadership is concerned, most of us think first of education as the bottleneck. But we Americans are completely missing a second critical choke-point in computing capacity and infrastructure. Most of our government’s research-oriented supercomputers are already 2X over-subscribed at our current level of demand. And before the next decade, our level of science will be 1,000-fold in its computational demands.

To sustain and extend our lead in High Performance Computing, we don’t have to revive the decades-old debate about industrial policy and the government picking winners through massive bets on industry sectors. We just need to spend smarter to get cost-effective hybrid HPC on the national agenda, and equip our best minds with the computing capacity they need to innovate and create jobs.

The Council on Competitiveness and its HPC initiative are a great place to see how organizations are accelerating innovation, advancing R&D, and reducing new product cycle time to drive revenue and reduce costs.

The Senate should get behind Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and his amendment to the reauthorization of the America Competes Act. Government agencies need to coordinate around the opportunity that GPUs and hybrid architectures offer. And the business community should be clearer with the public about what’s at stake. The first large-scale hybrid GPU hosted cloud was launched just last month. With more and more companies moving data and software to cloud computing services, HPC ushers in huge operating advantages for oil and gas, finance, medical devices and services, and any sector with massive quantities of data that can be crunched more efficiently with hybrid parallel processors, significantly reducing costs. Why would we allow our position as world leader in HPC to slip, the way we have with automobiles, battery technology and memory chips? Why would we surrender the business growth, job creation, and competitiveness delivered by supercomputing in a vast range of affected industries?

As U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Steven Koonin put it last month at a conference of computer scientists, “High Performance Computing feeds itself. Once you fall off the curve, it’s really hard to get back on.”

If we don’t decide to win at this game, we will be pushed out of the way.

There’s plenty of room in the market for Apple TV and Google TV both, because the two devices appeal to different audiences. This according to Intel (INTC) CEO Paul Otellini, who sees Google (GOOG) TV appealing to geeks and the newly revamped Apple (AAPL) TV appealing to, well, grannies.

“It seems like he [Apple CEO Steve Jobs] actually took a step backward from the paradigm he had with the first Apple TV, which was much more of a computer,” Otellini told The Wall Street Journal. “Google TV…is a whole different approach. It’s the full Internet, integrated seamlessly with live content. I think it’s a very powerful model. But I also believe there are probably households that one will appeal to and the other won’t. My mom might use an Apple TV because it’s really simplistic. My son is probably going to go buy a Google TV, simply because it’s cool. He wants to be able to do his Facebook chat and talk to his friends, saying “Hey, are you watching the game?” in real time. You cannot do that on Apple TV.”

Incidentally, Otellini says Google TV devices are to begin shipping this month, which is a bit earlier than expected, I think.

There’s plenty of room in the market for Apple TV and Google TV both, because the two devices appeal to different audiences. This according to Intel (INTC) CEO Paul Otellini, who sees Google (GOOG) TV appealing to geeks and the newly revamped Apple (AAPL) TV appealing to, well, grannies.

“It seems like he [Apple CEO Steve Jobs] actually took a step backward from the paradigm he had with the first Apple TV, which was much more of a computer,” Otellini told The Wall Street Journal. “Google TV…is a whole different approach. It’s the full Internet, integrated seamlessly with live content. I think it’s a very powerful model. But I also believe there are probably households that one will appeal to and the other won’t. My mom might use an Apple TV because it’s really simplistic. My son is probably going to go buy a Google TV, simply because it’s cool. He wants to be able to do his Facebook chat and talk to his friends, saying “Hey, are you watching the game?” in real time. You cannot do that on Apple TV.”

Whatever you say Mr. Google board member …

Incidentally, Otellini says Google TV devices are to begin shipping this month, which is a bit earlier than expected, I think.

By Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

On Wednesday, Craigslist pulled the “censored” label from its U.S. site — but didn’t restore its controversial adult services section.

Craigslist first put up a black box reading “censored” on its site last Friday, following a period of increased pressure from a group of attorneys general and anti-prostitution groups. Craigslist hasn’t explained the move, or said whether it plans to permanently shut down adult services listings, which critics say had become an online red light district.

Now the “censored” label, which suggested that Craigslist executives saw adult services as a First Amendment issue, is gone. Craiglist didn’t explain the move.

We may get more of a clue of their view next Wednesday, when the House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on domestic minor sex trafficking. Craigslist executives last week told the Journal that they had been invited to speak at the event.

A spokeswoman for the committee said that the witness list hadn’t yet been confirmed. Craigslist’s spokeswoman declined to comment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

By Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

On Wednesday, Craigslist pulled the “censored” label from its U.S. site — but didn’t restore its controversial adult services section.

Craigslist first put up a black box reading “censored” on its site last Friday, following a period of increased pressure from a group of attorneys general and anti-prostitution groups. Craigslist hasn’t explained the move, or said whether it plans to permanently shut down adult services listings, which critics say had become an online red light district.

Now the “censored” label, which suggested that Craigslist executives saw adult services as a First Amendment issue, is gone. Craiglist didn’t explain the move.

We may get more of a clue of their view next Wednesday, when the House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on domestic minor sex trafficking. Craigslist executives last week told the Journal that they had been invited to speak at the event.

A spokeswoman for the committee said that the witness list hadn’t yet been confirmed. Craigslist’s spokeswoman declined to comment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The online video shakeout is happening, though not as quickly as you might have thought two years ago: Instead of going away overnight, video sites that aren’t YouTube or Hulu are quietly circling each other. Everyone talks to everyone about a potential deal, though few of them actually get consummated.

Here’s one that did: MetaCafe has bought Action Sports, without laying out any cash. MetaCafe CEO Erick Hachenburg won’t put a value on the deal, but says it was an equity transaction between the two private companies.

So what does he get for his equity? In addition to the four million visitors that Action Sports’ Go211 gets a month, MetaCafe will also get a new chief revenue officer, in the form of former Action Sports CEO Sean Aruda.

Hachenburg will keep Go211 operating, but the real goal is to use the sports sites’ video to stock a new vertical for MetaCafe itself, expanding on a strategy the company has been pursuing for a while. Meanwhile MetaCafe, which came close to a Yahoo (YHOO) sale in the months following Google’s (GOOG) YouTube buy a few years ago, is staying independent, despite hiring bankers Think Equity to shop the company/pursue “strategic investors” last year.

By Laura Kreutzer and Sabrina Willmer, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal

Raising a venture capital fund these days is no easy feat. But a small number of firms appear to have the wind at their backs, and that wind may have a name: Zynga Game Network Inc.

Foundry Group and Avalon Ventures, both of which invested in one of Zynga’s first rounds of financing back in early 2008, each have plenty of interest in their latest fund offerings, in part because of the performance boost they’ve gotten from that deal – even if much of it is on paper.

Avalon, for example, is expected to wrap up its ninth fund, ahead of a $150 million target sometime later this year. Meanwhile, Foundry Group has already collected at least $225 million in commitments for its second venture fund, according to investors.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Hostilities between NetApp (NTAP) and Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle (ORCL) last year, have finally ended. This morning the two companies said they had agreed to dismiss their respective patent infringement lawsuits against each other, closing out a battle that began back in 2007. Neither company offered much in the way of comment on the deal, saying only that they “seek to have the lawsuits dismissed without prejudice” and that the terms of their agreement are confidential.

Brett Favre and the Vikings limp into the Superdome tonight to play the Saints and kick off the NFL season. Great stuff, and if for some reason you’re not going to be in front of a TV, you’re not screwed: You can watch the game live on the Web, legally and for free, via NBC’s “Football Extra” feature.

Actually, even if you are watching on a big screen, it’s worth playing with the NBC webcast, just for fun: I’ve tried it a couple times over the past couple years, and it’s pretty good: The main attraction is the extra camera angles — in the past, they’ve included a shot dedicated exclusively to Favre, which I like. (Some of you, I realize, may choose other angles.)

This is a great, commonsense offering from NBC and the NFL: There’s absolutely no reason to watch football on a PC unless you have to, so it’s hard to see them losing eyeballs here.

Which means every Web visit – and Web dollar or dime — they do get is purely additive. (Note to those of you that like to gripe about this stuff — you will need to have Microsoft’s (MSFT) Silverlight installed to watch the stream.)

But don’t get used to it. After tonight’s game, NBC and the NFL are only offering this once a week, during NBC’s Sunday night game. And it goes away entirely once the playoffs start. Beyond that, if you want to watch the NFL on the Web, you’ve either got to pay through the nose for a DirectTV package, or try to find an illegal stream.

Meanwhile, note the utter absence of a Web marketing campaign telling you about the NBC feed. It’s been up and running since 2008, but I had to reach out to NBC this morning to confirm that it’s still extant.

It’s easy to understand why the Web games are a quiet experiment, unfortunately: NBC and the other broadcasters — CBS (CBS), News Corp.’s Fox (NWS) and Disney’s ABC (DIS) are paying the NFL a collective $3 billion a year in license fees. So both sides have an incentive, for now, to keep the games a TV-only experience.

Big sports — and the pro football in particular — are one of the last bastions of old-style TV economics. Once you see cheap and legal access to the games, on the Web, on a regular basis, you’ll know that the TV/Web convergence is here for good.

Brett Favre and the Vikings limp into the Superdome tonight to play the Saints and kick off the NFL season. Great stuff, and if for some reason you’re not going to be in front of a TV, you’re not screwed: You can watch the game live on the Web, legally and for free, via NBC’s Football Extra feature.

Actually, even if you are watching on a big screen, it’s worth playing with the NBC webcast, just for fun: I’ve tried it a couple of times over the past couple of years, and it’s pretty good: The main attraction is the extra camera angles–in the past, they’ve included a shot dedicated exclusively to Favre, which I like. (Some of you, I realize, may choose other angles.)

This is a great, commonsense offering from NBC and the NFL: There’s absolutely no reason to watch football on a PC unless you have to, so it’s hard to see them losing eyeballs here.

Which means every Web visit–and Web dollar or dime–they do get is purely additive. (Note to those of you who like to gripe about this stuff–you will need to have Microsoft’s (MSFT) Silverlight installed to watch the stream.)

But don’t get used to it. After tonight’s game, NBC and the NFL are only offering this once a week, during NBC’s Sunday-night game. And it goes away entirely once the playoffs start. Beyond that, if you want to watch the NFL on the Web, you’ve either got to pay through the nose for a DirectTV package or try to find an illegal stream.

Meanwhile, note the utter absence of a Web marketing campaign telling you about the NBC feed. It’s been up and running since 2008, but I had to reach out to NBC this morning to confirm that it’s still extant.

It’s easy to understand why the Web games are a quiet experiment, unfortunately: NBC and the other broadcasters–CBS (CBS), News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and Disney’s (DIS) ABC are paying the NFL a collective $3 billion a year in license fees. So both sides have an incentive, for now, to keep the games a TV-only experience.

Big sports–and pro football in particular–are one of the last bastions of old-style TV economics. Once you see cheap and legal access to the games on the Web, on a regular basis, you’ll know that the TV/Web convergence is here for good.

Adobe: That Whole “Go Screw Yourself Apple” Thing? Forget It. [Digital Daily]

“We are encouraged to see Apple lifting its restrictions on its licensing terms, giving developers the freedom to choose what tools they use to develop applications for Apple devices.”

– Readjusting its attitude a bit, Adobe weighs in on Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines

By Beth Callaghan

Yahoo owns 40 percent of China’s Alibaba Group, but since Yahoo Hong Kong’s Managing Director Alfred Tsoi Po-tak was quoted Monday as saying that the company wants to lure smaller mainland advertisers onto its site, the relationship has entered questionable territory. The move would put the two companies in direct competition, and as such, the alliance would need to be re-evaluated, according to John Spelich, a spokesman for Alibaba Group. Yahoo couldn’t be reached for comment.

Officially, Google doesn’t talk about YouTube’s profitability, or lack thereof. Except, of course, when Google executives do talk about it.

Then they say that YouTube is very close to becoming profitable.

That’s what CFO Patrick Pichette said in July 2009. And that’s what sales boss Nikesh Arora said in July of this year. And that’s what CEO Eric Schmidt said today, according to Dow Jones Newswires:

“YouTube is ‘nearing profitability and its revenue is doing quite well,’ Schmidt told journalists at the sidelines of a conference at the French university SciencesPo. ‘It looks like it’s going to be very successful,’ he said.”

Okay. So does anyone want to guess when, if ever, Google will tell us that YouTube is actually profitable?

By Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Jounal

Since Apple (AAPL) popularized the idea of mobile phone apps two years ago, smartphone owners are downloading more apps onto their iPhones, Android phones and Blackberry devices.

According to a new survey by Nielsen of more than 4,000 smartphone users who have downloaded at least one app in the past 30 days, the average number of apps they have on their phones has increased to 27 in August from 22 last December.

Users of Apple’s iPhone significantly tops that with an average of 40 apps on their phones. But Android and Blackberry owners’ app usage has also steadily increased to 25 apps and 14 apps, respectively, from 22 apps and 10 apps last December. Android phones can be made by a number of mobile phone makers but they all run on Google’s (GOOG) mobile operating system. Canadian company Research in Motion (RIMM) makes Blackberries.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Now that Apple has formally let Google’s AdMob into its iPhone/iPod/iPad platform, Google has posted a thank-you note, via a blog post from AdMob chief Omar Hamoui. The truth is, Apple (AAPL) has been more or less ignoring its AdMob ban throughout the summer. But Hamoui and the rest of the Google (GOOG) gang will be happy to see the formal change, anyway. Presumably the same goes for antitrust regulators.

Here’s some interesting language from Apple’s newly released App Review Guidlines, rules that don’t bode well for the me-too apps that proliferate in the company’s iTunes App Store–especially the flatulence-focused ones.

• Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them.
• We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps.
• If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.

So there’s Apple’s (AAPL) official response to the fart-app incursion. One is enough, folks. And if you’ve got a problem with that, well, too bad, says a final bullet point.

• If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.

Sounds like Steve Jobs wrote some of these himself, doesn’t it?

Engadget has the guidelines in full as well as additional analysis.

By Beth Callaghan

Sure, the Kindle is available at Target and Staples, but with the addition of Amazon’s popular device to its lineup this fall, Best Buy will be the only retailer to sell all three leading e-readers. Consumers will be able to handle and compare Sony’s Reader devices, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle side by side, and the store will support its expanded lineup with prominent in-store displays.

Internet censorship isn’t just a barrier to free expression–it’s a barrier to free trade as well. And Google (GOOG) Chief Legal Officer David Drummond says we need to start treating it like one because it limits access to foreign markets.

“If this were happening with physical trade, we’d all be saying this violates trade agreements,” Drummond said. “If you want to be part of the community of free trade, you have to let the Internet be open.”

So what’s to be done? Drummond says the U.S. government needs to respond to foreign nations who censor the Internet in the same way it would to those that restrict free trade. “We have great opportunities now with pending trade agreements to start putting some pressure on countries to recognize that internet freedom not only is a core value–that we should be holding them to account from a human rights standpoint,” he said. “But also that if you want to be part of the community of free trade, you are going to have to find a way to allow the internet to be open.”

A wonderful idea in theory, but one that’s certainly not going to go over well in places like China, where an “open Internet” is by defininition a restricted one.

Apple wants app developers to know that it has been listening to their grousing, and that it takes their complaints seriously. How seriously? Enough to make some changes in the way its development process works.

Just as important: Apple (AAPL) appears to have opened the door for programs originally created using Adobe’s Flash. And it seems to have given the go-ahead to Google’s AdMob mobile ad network, which it looked ready to block earlier this year.

Apple says it will finally publish guidelines for app approval at its iTunes store “to help developers understand how we review submitted apps.” That may mollify developers’ long-standing complaint about seemingly arbitrary rejections at the store.

But Apple’s other changes seem aimed at making peace–or at least establishing a détente–with corporate rivals Google and Adobe. And perhaps mollifying federal regulators asking antitrust questions.

Some tech observers, like Hank Williams, believe that Apple’s statement regarding 3.3.1 and “developer tools” means that the company will now allow developers to port applications originally designed in Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash over to the iPhone/iPod/iPad platform. If so, that’s a big deal, and investors believe that’s the case–Adobe is up 7 percent this morning.  But it’d be nice to confirm that with Apple, too, so I’ve asked.

Meanwhile, note that section 3.3.9 of the agreement is the one that dealt with mobile app data, which made Google’s (GOOG) AdMob and other advertising and analytic companies upset earlier this year. Based on the changes Apple has made, it appears to have finally given Google the all clear to sell ads on its apps, by removing a caveat that only allowed “independent” ad networks to collect performance data. But third-party analytics companies like Flurry, and perhaps Comscore (SCOR), still appear to be shut out.

UPDATE: Here’s the text of the three changes Apple has made to its developer’s license:

3.3.1 OLD:
3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

3.3.1 NEW:
3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

3.3.2 OLD:
3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. Unless otherwise approved by Apple in writing, no interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s). Notwithstanding the foregoing, with Apple’s prior written consent, an Application may use embedded interpreted code in a limited way if such use is solely for providing minor features or functionality that are consistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application.

3.3.2 NEW:
3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple’s built-in WebKit framework.

3.3.9 OLD:
3.3.9 You and Your Applications may not collect, use, or disclose to any third party, user or device data without prior user consent, and then only under the following conditions:

- The collection, use or disclosure is necessary in order to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application. For example, without Apple’s prior written consent, You may not use third party analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party for aggregation, processing, or analysis.

- The collection, use or disclosure is for the purpose of serving advertising to Your Application; is provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving
mobile ads (for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent); and the disclosure is limited to UDID, user location data, and other data specifically designated by Apple as available for advertising purposes.

3.3.9 NEW:
3.3.9 You and Your Applications may not collect user or device data without prior user consent, and then only to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application, or to serve advertising. You may not use analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party.

Release below:

The App Store℠ has revolutionized the way mobile applications are developed and distributed. With over 250,000 apps and 6.5 billion downloads, the App Store has become the world’s largest mobile application platform and App Store developers have earned over one billion dollars from the sales of their apps.

We are continually trying to make the App Store even better. We have listened to our developers and taken much of their feedback to heart. Based on their input, today we are making some important changes to our iOS Developer Program license in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 to relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year.

In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.

In addition, for the first time we are publishing the App Store Review Guidelines to help developers understand how we review submitted apps. We hope it will make us more transparent and help our developers create even more successful apps for the App Store.

The App Store is perhaps the most important milestone in the history of mobile software. Working together with our developers, we will continue to surprise and delight our users with innovative mobile apps.