Toshiba, Sony Tensions Mount Over DVD Standard

Japanese electronic maker Toshiba has given up on negotiations with a rival camp led by Sony Corp. to agree on a unified format for next-generation DVDs, a media report said late Tuesday.

Toshiba and Microsoft and others, you’ll recall, favor the HD-DVD standard. Sony and others want Blu-Ray. This hasn’t become an all out cat and dog fight yet…but…

In New Zealand, Lambs Good, Spam Baaaa…d

A new law in New Zealand would classify even one unsolicited email as spam. Businesses would fall foul of the law by sending out just a single unsolicited e-mail unless they could reasonably infer the recipient’s consent to receive it.

It’s the work of New Zealand Communications Minister David Cunliffe.

Mr Cunliffe says Microsoft’s proposed “opt out” approach is too weak and has been rejected. “We decided it’s going to be opt-in. End of story. Why should you have to opt out of spam?”

IBM’s “zNextGen” Initiative Seeks Young People For Future Mainframe Careers

IBM The initiative and its associated community is being dubbed “zNextGen,” a reference to IBM’s zSeries mainframe brand.

CNET Headline: Oracle Wades Deeper Into Collaboration

The database giant said on Monday that Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g will add two important features, including an end-user-oriented document-sharing tool and a revamped content management server called Oracle Content Services. The entire suite will cost $60 per name user.

Google Desktop 2 Includes New ‘Sidebar’ Feature

Yes, I know. This is a Sidecar and the new feature from Google is called a Sidebar…
But this is much more visually interesting and in a way, makes the point.
The free program called “Sidebar” offers personalized information including e-mail, news, weather, photos, stocks or other content in a small vertical window on the side of a user’s screen.

Is Microsoft’s Robert Scoble a Noble Blogger…

or is he part of an opportunistic PR machine at an increasingly cynical Microsoft hoping to humanize the company again through Scobel’s ‘independent voice?’

The question needs to be asked.

From time to time, Scoble bespeaks negative things about his employer Microsoft. How brave and unconventional of him! How open-minded of his employer! How unafraid!

Google Tucks a Little Insider Joke for the Mathematically Inclined in its Offering News

Silicon Valley’s favorite parlor game — guessing what’s happening behind the doors of the Googleplex — swung into high gear Thursday after the Mountain View Internet giant announced plans to raise more than $4 billion through a second stock offering.

To be specific, Google plans to sell 14,159,265 shares of its own stock. Odd number, isn’t it? Not just 14 million to round things off for convenience? Nope. 14,159,265, which just happens to be the eight numbers in eact order after the 3 in the formula for pi.

Who says money isn’t funny, huh?

Report Sites SMB ‘Apprehensions’ and Skills Deficits When it Comes to Internet Marketing

The common assumption that is so often made when the SMB market is slow to adopt the latest and greatest is that we’re fearful, unskilled, or under-staffed. Is this true? Or do we have what I call ‘Pay-dar,’ which is SMB radar for the gargoyles and gotchas of big time brand name technologies that will prove too costly to implement and maintain?

SMBs and midmarket enterprises aren’t fully using the available online e-commerce and marketing potential of the Internet, and are losing profit because of it. These are some of the key insights and best practices uncovered by Yankee Group’s DecisionNote, Evolving SMB and Mid-Market Enterprise Web-Hosting Market Dynamics study.

Gartner Report Contrasts SMB IT Spending Percentages and Preferences vis a vis Bigger Organizations

Small and midsized organizations (under $1 billion in revenue) are spending 53 percent to 60 percent of their total information technology (IT) budget on infrastructure, including data centre, voice and data networks, desktop and help desk, according to Gartner Consulting’s Worldwide IT Benchmark Service. For organizations over $1 billion in revenue, the average spent on IT infrastructure is just under 50 percent.

I may be wrong but the message being conveyed here seems to be that SMBs spend less on the cool stuff; more on nuts and bolts? That’s probably true.

Notebook Sales in Month Surpass Desktops Thanks to SMB Preference…

For the first time ever, distributors sold more notebook computers than desktops in a month.

This is an interesting outcome since small and mid-sized businesses are so often cited as being unable or unwilling to spend more than is absolutely necessary for technology. As the article notes: Revenue generated from notebooks has long surpassed desktops, thanks to higher average selling prices for notebooks.
Does it mean SMBs understand the mobility factor better, and sooner, than the establishment, hard wired, show up everyday organization?