Last fall, Steve Ball, Microsoft’s program manager for sound in Vista, posted a blog entry explaining some of the reasons why Windows audio can be glitchy. (That was supposed to be “Part 1″ of a series; we’re still waiting for Part 2.)

Interestingly, two of my audio production teachers are longtime PC devotees who prefer Steinberg’s Nuendo software (they use v3). I didn’t expect this, given that I’ve often heard that
Mac+ProTools is the default platform for pro audio. But even with their PC preference, both of them have said numerous times that there’s no way they’ll move to Vista until some underlying issues are resolved. In general, because the interplay between pro audio hardware and software is so complicated, there’s little incentive for engineers to replace systems that work well–if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But in this case, even if their PCs went belly up tomorrow, they’d stick with XP.

Today, Guardian writer Tim Anderson picks up the thread with an article called “Why Vista Sounds Worse.” In addition to citing Ball’s blog posting, he talks to the CTO for Cakewalk (a division of Roland that makes consumer and professional audio software) and an engineer at Steinberg (which makes the popular Cubase and Nuendo digital audio workstation programs). The basic story: Microsoft changed the audio architecture for Vista in some fundamental ways, introducing new APIs and driver models for audio devices. Some vendors didn’t have time to adjust to the new technology, but continue to use older technology that Vista still supports through emulation software. Emulation equals worse performance. That tends to mean more audio glitches. (If you want to go much deeper, Create Digital Music posted an excellent in-depth interview with Cakewalk CTO Noel Borthwick a couple weeks ago.)

Following is a portion of the full interview:

Microsoft’s oligarchs and other large software companies recognize that the shift to the cloud is a critical path. Benioff better run even faster, before the dinosaurs catch up a la Jurassic Park. You can bet that if the dinosaurs start to close in, he will run into the arms of one of the older dinosaurs, including Microsoft, or the new breed, such as Google.

Q:Right, but we’re talking about SQL Server. We’re talking about their software-as-a-service strategy, and so on. Can we consider those monopolistic?
Benioff: Well, not in the same way, of course. But the point is that they’re trying to hold onto their past more than trying to create their future. This has been the great failing of Microsoft over the last 10 years. I haven’t seen the level of innovation from them that we see from other vendors.

Q: As the concept of the platform as a service becomes more of a reality over the next decade, do you think that Microsoft has an opportunity to be one of the big platforms?
Benioff: The evidence is that history, more or less, will repeat itself because there is no acknowledgment to some of the core tenants of this new paradigm. I think only in the cases where they will be dragged, kicking and screaming, and I think the best example probably is Gmail.

Google is doing really well with Gmail. I think that’s why now you will see Microsoft have to respond with a multitenant e-mail solution. They have Hotmail, but not Hotmail for business per se. They’re definitely going to have to do that.

Q: But are those cash cows monopolies?
Benioff: Well, I think one was ruled a monopoly.

During the interview Benioff said of Microsoft, “…there is no acknowledgment to some of the core tenets of this new paradigm.” He is not overly impressed by Microsoft’s newfound and aggressive focus on the Web as a platform, as driven by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie.

Microsoft has been slow to adopt the multitenant architecture. The company is prepping Dynamics CRM 4, also known as CRM Live, to go after Salesforce.com, as well as bringing other products in the Dynamics family into a hosted, multitenant environment. Phil Wainewright pointed out in his ZDNet blog post, Microsoft hasn’t publicly put services fully at the forefront of its strategy:

Q: In 2005 you said that Microsoft was a dinosaur facing the obsolescence of a technology and a business model. Fast-forward to 2008 and Microsoft just had a big event in Las Vegas, where Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie got up onstage and articulated a vision that had a lot of similarities to what you’re talking about vis a vis platform as a service, such as its SQL Server data services. So, has your opinion changed?
Benioff: No. If we had waited for Microsoft to create any of those, nothing would be created yet. Look at the whole software service phenomenon. Where are they? I think Microsoft is still a dinosaur.

Q: But what I’m asking today is whether you have changed your opinion. Do you think that Microsoft is still a dinosaur?
Benioff:I think Microsoft is still a dinosaur. More than ever, it tries to hold onto its monopolistic position around technology that they hold, whether it’s SQL Server, whether it’s NT, whether it’s Windows, whether it’s Office–these are their cash cows they don’t want slaughtered.

Charlie Cooper and I interviewed Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff last week. Following is part of the exchange, where I asked Benioff for his thoughts on Microsoft. He has called Microsoft a dinosaur, incapable of innovation, and a monopolist.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff

Publicly, Microsoft talks up the merits of its ’software-plus-services’ strategy. In my view, the message is bunkum, even though it reflects the reality of Microsoft’s business today: mostly software, with a few early-stage service offerings. But Microsoft has its message back-to-front. Until Microsoft reverses the software-plus-services mantra and puts services at the forefront of its vision, it will continue to disappoint.
I know many people want to believe Microsoft still remains in charge of its destiny and won’t let cloud rivals walk all over it. But time after time, history shows that it’s fresh startups, not incumbent giants, that gain leadership in new technologies and markets. I guess we’re just wired to expect those who wield power to stay in place. But the truth is that, at times of change, it takes a change of leader to adapt to the new circumstances.
Recent pronouncements by chief strategy officer Ray Ozzie suggest that, despite the public bluster, Microsoft’s top brass already secretly realize that they must put services, not software, at the center of their worldview (the world of the mesh, Ozzie calls it).

His braggadocio has garnered Salesforce.com loads of attention since its inception nine years ago. What’s somewhat mystifying is how competitors have stood by while Salesforce.com heads toward $1 billion in revenue for its next fiscal year, ending January 31, 2009.

Disparaging large competitors is part of Benioff’s marketing offensive. He has taken shots at SAP, Oracle, Siebel, and others, dismissing them as 20th century fossils who are making feeble attempts to adapt to Web and cloud computing.

But, if you listen to Ozzie carefully, he is sending clear signals that point to software services and synchronization across all devices, online and offline. It’s not a pure services model, because users do want to work offline at times. Even Salesforce.com and Google recognize the hybrid working model with their efforts to provide offline access.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News)

Normally I wouldn’t get too amped about a 19-inch monitor, but this one has two big perks: built-in speakers and an HDMI interface (VGA, too). That means you could connect, say, a Blu-ray player or
Xbox 360, or even an HD cable box. And because the monitor has a maximum resolution of 1,440 by 900, it can do 720p HDTV if you do connect a box.

Alas, the speakers have just two watts of power behind them, so don’t expect audio that’ll blow your hair back. But otherwise this monitor’s a winner: It has 27 glowing user reviews on Best Buy’s product page. I’m very tempted to grab one for use with a media-center PC.

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(Credit:
Best Buy)

Look, I’m your biggest fan. I’ve been reading digitally distributed fiction and non-fiction since the early days of the PalmPilot.

(By the way, bargain hunters, eReader.com sells “This is Where I Leave You” for $9.95–still disproportionately high, but more reasonable at least.)

(Credit:
Amazon)

Readers, it’s time for you to step up and letter-bomb both booksellers and publishers, to let them know you’ve got money to spend on books, but want fair prices.

But I’m getting increasingly frustrated with e-book prices, which rarely represent a savings over their print (aka dead-tree) counterparts.

I’m no businessman (English major, natch), but even I understand the economics of volume. Want to sell more e-books? Lower the prices. Forget how things work in the physical world, where selling more books means more production, more shipping, more consumables. E-books require none of that. The only real “consumable” is bandwidth, and there’s no shortage of that.

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Apple figured out that 99 cents was the magic price point for songs and managed to strong-arm record labels into letting it sell at that point. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony–it’s time for you step up and convince book publishers to do likewise.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. For as long as I’ve been reading them, e-books have cost nearly as much as their print siblings.

One final thought: at the same time you’re raking in newfound profits, publishers, you’ll be creating a more literate, well-read society. Not a bad perk, eh?

Case in point: I just read a glowing review of Jonathan Tropper’s “This is Where I Leave You.” I’m sold; I want it. But something’s amiss here: Amazon’s hardcover price is $15.57, while the Kindle edition sells for $14.01.

Let’s get some perspective. Publishers have vast libraries of old, forgotten books that are generating zero income, or close to it. Why can’t I buy e-book editions for 99 cents? Last I checked, some revenue was better than no revenue.

That’s the end of my diatribe. Over to you, readers. Would you buy more e-books if they cost just a buck or two? Would you be more likely to buy, say, a Kindle if cheap books were part of the deal? I eagerly await your thoughts on the subject.

Amazon inexplicably charges nearly as much for the e-book edition as for the hardcover.

I also understand the concept of perceived value. If you make e-books cheap, that cheapens the value of books in general, right? No. Wrong. Hogwash. That’s 20th century thinking.

I will not buy “This is Where I Leave You” for $14.01. At $9.95, I have to think about it. For $2.99, publisher Dutton Adult, by way of Amazon or eReader or whoever, would already have my money. And probably a lot more, as I’d be snapping up books left and right.

Explain to me, then, why the e-book edition of “This is Where I Leave You” sells for $14.01. The $.01 suggests there must be some calculation at work, some formula you use to determine that Kindle and iPhone owners get to save all of a buck-fifty-six when they read green.

E-books, on the other hand, consume zero trees. They weigh nothing, occupy no physical space, and don’t get shipped in the traditional sense. Middlemen are few and far between. So you’re left with, what, editing costs and the pittance you pay the authors?

Now, I understand books cost money. There’s editing, publishing, and distribution. Paper, ink, trucks, gasoline. Storage, shipping, shelf space, sales staff. And the countless people involved in all those transactions.

It’s time for that to change.

The most frequently used apps on my
iPhone, bar none, are Kindle, eReader, and Stanza.

Why aren’t best sellers priced at, say, $2.99? That’s an impulse-buy price, one that would encourage readers to pony up instead of waiting weeks or months to check out the one print copy the library bought.

Companies bidding in the Federal Communications Commission’s 700MHz spectrum auction are starting to talk.

Verizon Wireless plans to use its newly won wireless spectrum licenses in the 700MHz auction to deliver 4G services, CTO Tony Melone told the wireless news site Unstrung.

And the B-block licenses, which cover parts of California and New Jersey, will be used for research and development.

But the company doesn’t plan to roll out the new network any time soon. According to RCR Wireless, AT&T’s CTO doesn’t expect the technology to be ready until 2012.

AT&T also said it plans to use the $6.6 billion worth of spectrum it bought in the B block to build a 4G network using LTE, according to RCRWirelessNews. The company will also use spectrum it won in the 2006 advanced wireless services (AWS) auction for the new network.

Cell phone chipmaker Qualcomm said it plans to use licenses it bought in the E block to provide more capacity for its mobile broadcast TV service called MediaFlo. Qualcomm spent a total of $558.1 million on licenses in the E block and a few licenses in the B block. The E-block licenses will expand MediaFlo coverage in areas such as Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Other bidders in the auction have begun to talk, as well. Google, which had also been bidding on the C-block spectrum, said its main goal in bidding was to make sure the $4.6 billion reserve price was met so that the open-access rule would take effect. Richard Whitt, Washington telecom and media counsel, and Joseph Faber, corporate counsel for Google, wrote about Google’s strategy on the company’s Public Policy Blog on Thursday.

The gag order that silenced those participating in the FCC’s auction that ended last month was lifted late Thursday. Now companies are free to discuss their plans and strategies for bidding in the auction.

Joe Ambeault, director of consumer product development for Verizon, said Verizon might offer networked services in the future in addition to services that take advantage of hardware installed in the home.

“This is a tremendous victory for consumers, which will allow us to make DVRs available to many more people, faster and less expensively than would otherwise be possible,” Tom Rutledge, Cablevision’s chief operating officer, said in a statement.

But the film studios and television networks that brought the suit against Cablevision, including Time Warner, News Corp., Walt Disney, and CBS, which owns CBS Interactive, the publisher of CNET News, argued that this remote storage infringed their copyrights. Specifically, they said that Cablevision’s remote storage DVR operates more like a video on-demand (VOD) service than a DVR. Therefore, Cablevision should obtain licenses from content owners before people can record and store content on the remote DVR.

By putting the functionality in the network, Cablevision could reduce the cost of offering the service. Today, cable operators spend about 10 percent of their capital investment on providing DVR boxes to customers, according to Craig Moffett, an analyst at Bernstein Research. And if Cablevision can reduce its cost, it could offer the service at a lower price, which in turn could make the service appealing to many more subscribers. It also means that Cablevision can roll out the service to new subscribers much more quickly.

“We are going to take advantage of both (centralized and distributed) approaches where it makes sense,” he said. “We could develop a centralized service that is similar to Cablevision’s. But it doesn’t preclude us from also leveraging hard drives in the home to do other things.”

A networked DVR service, might also allow people to get rid of their set-top boxes altogether or at least get smaller devices that don’t take up as much room as the bulky DVR boxes of today. And because the DVR function is housed in Cablevision’s network instead of at home, consumers also won’t have to deal with the hassle that often comes along with housing a relatively complex piece of networking equipment in their homes.

The court’s decision could pave the way for other video providers to offer similar services. So far, none of the major players has said whether they plan to offer networked DVRs. But Verizon, which is building a new fiber-to-the-home network, could be in a perfect position to offer such a service, since its network is fast and has very low latency.

The appeals court didn’t buy this argument. In fact, it saw no difference between the in-home DVRs and the ones that sit in the network to record and store TV shows and movies. In its written ruling, it also sent the case back to the U.S. District Court in New York for further proceedings.

“There isn’t a service we’ve considered that couldn’t be offered without the court’s ruling (in the Cablevision case),” Ambeault said. “It’s more a matter of it giving us more options as we go forward.”

Up until now, video providers have offered DVR services that allow people to record, store, and play back movies and TV shows on their set top boxes.

Cablevision’s Remote Storage DVR or RS-DVR service would allow people to have all the same functionality they have with their existing DVRs, but it doesn’t require them to have a special box to do it. Instead, all that functionality is in Cablevision’s network rather than on a box sitting in the subscriber’s home.

A U.S. appeals court has sided with cable provider Cablevision in allowing the company to offer its network-based DVR service despite arguments from the movie and TV industry that it infringes on their copyrights.

But he emphasized that the company has not had to change any of its plans for new DVR services based on the legal dispute between Cablevision and the TV and movie producers.

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, ruled that Cablevision’s proposed new service that allows movies and TV shows to be recorded on remote storage servers in Cablevision’s network “would not directly infringe plaintiffs’ exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works.” The appeals court overturned a lower court’s decision that was issued in March 2007.

“We appreciate the court’s perspective that, from the standpoint of existing copyright law, remote-storage DVRs are the same as the traditional DVRs that are in use today,” Rutledge said in his statement.

Louderback says he called MediaDefender and was told that it had indeed been injecting spoof files into the Revision3 network without permission for months as part of its antipiracy efforts to dilute the pool of pirated content online, but MediaDefender denied responsibility for the DOS attack.

(Credit:
Revision3)
“They saw us as a “distributor” - even though we were using Bittorrent for legitimate reasons. Once we shut them out, their vast network of servers were automatically programmed to implement a scorched earth policy, and shut us down in turn.

Revision3 says this is a photo of their equipment responding to the DOS attack.

“Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3’s servers for their own purposes–quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender’s servers freaked out, and went into attack mode,” he writes.

Revision3 has investigated the denial of service attack that kept it offline over the Memorial Day weekend and has concluded that antipiracy group MediaDefender is to blame.

The FBI is looking into the matter, he adds.

“We’re fans of Revision3,” he said. “We didn’t know they were running” the index server.

In a blog post on Thursday morning, Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback writes that much of the traffic that bombarded the Web TV network was traced back to MediaDefender. The group has a history of launching DOS attacks against distributors of what they believe to be copyrighted content, he alleges. MediaDefender’s clients include all the major recording label and movie studio, but not the RIAA or MPAA.

MediaDefender Chief Executive Randy Saaf told CNET News.com later on Thursday that the firm did nothing illegal, did not target Revision3 specifically, and was merely posting spoof files to what it saw as a public torrent index server that had pirated content on it just like anyone can post files to a torrent network.

Updated 3:20 p.m. PDT with comment from MediaDefender and to clarify that individual movie and recording studios, and not RIAA and MPAA, are clients of MediaDefender, and that Dmitri Villard is CEO of MediaDefender parent ArtistDirect and not MediaDefender.

Dimitri Villard, chief executive of MediaDefender parent ArtistDirect, did not immediately return calls or respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

It appears that Revision3’s servers were overwhelmed by backed up traffic when the company closed a back door that MediaDefender had been using into the network, Louderback speculates.

He notes that DOS attacks are illegal in the U.S. under 12 different statutes and that Revision3 suffered “measurable harm” to its business as it was unable to serve videos and ads through much of the weekend and into Tuesday, and its internal e-mail servers were even shut down.

There’s been a lot written recently about whether Google erred by acquiring YouTube, but it’s this kind of growth potential for online video that still makes YouTube a good deal at $1.65 billion–provided Google can figure out the ad model.

The study also points out that Web video sites are increasingly finding more efficient ways to distribute their content.

“These include content distribution networks that cache content closer to the user,” ABI Research wrote in a statement, “peer-to-peer networks which leverage users’ PCs, and hybrid networks which combine these two approaches.”

As my boss, Jim Kerstetter, points out, it’s unwise to put too much faith in predictions like this, but this isn’t too much of a stretch.

A new study says that the number of people who watch online video will top 1 billion in the next five years.

Needless to say, Target might prefer to get people directly to its site and have people search on-site, which at least in this example allows it to serve up a richer experience.

Target.com on-site search for "plasma tv."

Now, before we go much further, understand that I’m not suggesting ulterior motives here on Google’s part or that this is even a good or a bad thing. For regular users, I think this will be well received, and Google pays a lot of attention to delivering the best user experience it can–but that isn’t to say that there isn’t going to be a potential upside for the PPC program as well.

One thing this clearly means is that site optimization is more important than ever. Optimization will help to make sure that the teleportation results for your site are highly relevant and speak to the searcher, hopefully gaining the click-through from the searcher. If you are like Target and experience millions of searches a year just on your brand name, then you don’t want to leave your optimization to chance when it comes to teleportation.

Then let’s see what happens if someone searches just on “target.” No surprise that Target.com shows up No. 1 again in organic results and still no paid search ads. What is different is the appearance of the teleportation, search-within-search, box showing up below the sitelinks in the Target result, labeled as “Search target.com.”

But how might Target feel about this? Well, if it does help get searchers to their destination, then it might be happy with this. But it also might mean that its natural results are competing against paid-listings that it may not have been competing against under the other Target related searches. It also means that it may not be able to cull additional search information from its own site-search. While the quality of on-site search may vary from excellent to completely worthless, some sites invest heavily in their on-site search to not only deliver good results, but also to serve as insight into what their visitors are looking for. Being able to follow the search path, which they may be losing because of teleportation, may help improve the site experience.

Google search results for "target plasma tv."

So what does teleportation mean for the various players? Well hopefully, for the searchers, it does get them to what they are looking for faster and easier, but this can really vary as well and may or may not be more helpful than getting directly to the site.

Google’s new teleportation, its search-within-search function, is getting mixed responses, at least from some site owners, who may be remembering occasions when teleportation in the Star Trek transporter went wrong. Earlier in the month, Google introduced the teleportation functionality as a way to better help searchers find information within a site by providing a search box below the snippet of the top listing, which performs a “site:” search on the domain of that listing using the additional search terms the searcher added in.

Then when we do a teleportation search for “plasma tv,” we get the following search results. Notice that this creates the advanced search query “plasma tv site:target.com.” Now the searcher gets Target.com specific search results in the organic area, hopefully relevant to the search, but also eight paid listings that Target is now competing with.

When I first saw this, I thought it was interesting–once I was able to get it to show up. It doesn’t come up for every site, mainly big-name sites, nor does it come up for every search. One that it did come up for was searching for Amazon.com. After playing around with the teleportation search, I also began wondering how these big-name retailers would react and thought that some might not care for this new functionality. Why would they object?

So let’s take a look at some examples of how this may impact results and get a feel for why some site owners may be less than thrilled with this functionality. Let’s use national retailer Target as an example while we still can since its site is powered by Amazon. We’ll try this on searches for plasma TVs.

For Google, it means that searchers will have performed at least one more search on Google, instead of clicking through to Target.com immediately. And it may mean that it has gained an opportunity to serve up more targeted (no pun intended) search ads that otherwise may not have been served up (as we can see from the other Target focused searches which yielded no ads). Even more subtle here is the fact that many advertisers may not have bid against a big brand name to begin with. Currently, advertisers can use a trademarked brand as a trigger word as long as they don’t use it in the ad itself. As much of the legislation in this area continues to be formed and reformed, who knows whether this will always be the case–but it would seem that teleportation search may provide an additional means to serve up ads around another brand without even needing the advertiser to use that brand as a trigger word.

The “site:” advanced query is quite familiar to those within the search industry, but much less so to the average searcher. So bringing this functionality front and center for the searcher should be a well-received addition.

This isn’t all as cut-and-dried as this example may seem. The appearance of ads can vary widely from none to many. But for now it does serve as an example of at least one scenario that site owners need to be aware of.

Google search for "plasma tv."

Below we see the results that someone might see doing a search in Google for “target plasma tv.” Notice how there are no paid search results showing up, and not surprising, Target shows up in the top organic listing.

Good, bad or otherwise, what this means to site owners is that SEO may be more important than ever. Now, getting to the top listing may not be enough. Defending your brand may not be enough. Securing multiple listings through blended search may not be enough. What happens to the site that has excellent search, but terrible indexation in Google? Now more than ever, site owners need to focus on creating the most search-friendly site as they can to make sure that Google and other search engines can spider and index the site as completely as possible. For some sites, this is a huge challenge, trying to overcome legacy CMS and e-commerce systems. Fortunately, there are solutions like Netconcepts’ own GravityStream proxy optimization that can help many sites overcome these obstacles, but GravityStream isn’t for everyone.

Below we see the results that someone might see doing a search in Google just for “plasma tv” which includes eight paid search ads.

Google teleportation search results for "plasma tv" within Target.com.

Let me show you–except I can’t use Amazon to do it anymore. According to the New York Times, Amazon is one such retailer that has already objected and asked Google to turn off this functionality for its site. It seems that most of the talk so far, like that happening at Search Engine Land (here and here), has been more about acknowledgment than anything else, but Rishi Lakhani’s post at SEO Smarty shows that others have had similar thoughts as I.

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(Credit:
Asus)

In case you’re not familiar with the Eee PC, it’s one of the new breed of “Netbooks” that have become incomprehensibly popular in recent months. I say that because I’m not a fan–I prefer a full-size screen and keyboard, and enough processing power to do more than just check e-mail and cruise the Web.

That said, people seem to really love these little guys, and the Eee PC 900 has earned high marks from CNET and users alike. This model features an 8.9-inch screen, 20GB solid-state drive, 1.3-megapixel Webcam, and Linux operating system–all wrapped in a 2.2-pound package measuring just 8.9 inches by 6.5 inches by 0.9 inch. Travel-friendly it is.

The rebate deal (PDF) runs through the end of October, so you’ve got plenty of time to research the Eee before buying. I’ll admit this is a very attractive price point, but I’d still be more inclined to pay $400-500 on a full-fledged notebook. Agree? Disagree? Inquiring cheapskates wanna know.