Author Archive | Ed Oswald

Microsoft Considering Office for iPhone?

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 2, 2009 at 8:50 am

Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop raised hopes for a version of Office for iPhones during a talk at the Web 2.0 Expo. He says the company has took notice of the rise in demand among smartphone users to edit MS Office documents. When asked however directly if it meant the company was indeed developing a Office suite for iPhone, Elop deferred. “Not yet—keep watching,” he said.

Elop stressed that the company remains committed to Office on the web and mobile devices, and said that it continues work on a Web version of the suite. He did disclose that any beta of that product would not be this year.

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Hulu Sucks. Really.

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 1, 2009 at 8:52 pm

Okay. I know its not professional to say it, but I’m going to. Why must this company try so damn hard to make life difficult for the people who want to use their content? Oh that’s right. There’s this. Once again, the company is trying to dictate how and where you may watch the content on your site.

Let’s call it DRM — web style — because that’s pretty much what it is. Hulu is now taking steps to encrypt the HTML that they send to the browser, which in turn is decrypted at the client using JavaScript and DHTML. In plain English: if you’re not using a browser, you’re out of luck.

This is a bold-faced attempt at preventing any non-browser client (ahem, Boxee) from using its content in a way the company doesn’t approve of. Doesn’t matter what you the viewer may prefer, it’s Hulu’s way or the highway.

Bad news for Hulu, though — people have already found a way around this newest functionality — and Boxee is for all intents and purposes using a browser within its applicaiton to serve Hulu videos to you.

Given this content provider’s past history, its all but certain they’ll continue to try to thwart Boxee and others. After all, it directly threatens ZillionTV which in a shocker is supported by NBC Universal and News Corp, the two chief content providers to Hulu.

See, these two network’s sudden snub of Boxee was all planned. I just wish Boxee and others would stop being so nice to these people — its become abundantly clear they have no intention of being nice back.

Until Hulu stops this behavior, I’m no longer interested in using their service.

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Facebook's Problem is the Management

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 1, 2009 at 9:32 am

Shockwaves were felt throughout Silicon Valley when the social networking site announced that one of its star hires, CFO Gideon Yu, had been fired. Although Facebook claims that it is looking for someone with “public company experience,” (ludicrous because Yu held executive positions with Google (YouTube) and Yahoo), industry insiders say it was very much an inside job.

See, Yu apparently did not care much for Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg–Facebook’s star Google hire–and increasingly was not seeing eye to eye with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to our friend and colleague Kara Swisher. That adds up to a lot of internal infighting, and not a need for a CFO with more experience.

Reportedly, Yu left the company immediately after a meeting, symbolistic of Zuckerberg’s apparent “you’re with me or against me” mentality. But the way Facebook framed the departure is troubling.

Facebook has made it no secret that it would like to go public, and the company is attempting to say letting go of Yu was a step in that direction. That kind of logic is faulty.

Zuckerberg needs to learn if he wants to take his company public that investors do not like turmoil. The revolving door of executives at Facebook will make investors uneasy, and reluctant to invest in the company.

No slight intended at the young CEO, but I think this is where his youth comes as a major negative. Being young myself, I know that sometimes we make judgments more based out of emotion rather than thinking them through first.

I can’t see that Mark’s much different than me. Wisdom does come with age, and I think we learn that sometimes its best to surround yourself with people who may not see eye to eye with you all the time. Keeps your mind open.

Surrounding yourself with “yes men” is never a good thing. I’m beginning to think financing and lack of users will never kill Facebook, it will be the management itself.

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Android May Start Appearing on Netbooks

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 1, 2009 at 8:00 am

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that HP and other manufacturers are considering using Google’s Android on netbooks. HP has confirmed the report, saying it is considering using the OS, however has made no final decisions on the matter. Asustek and Dell are also said to be considering similiar moves.

Using Android on netbooks does not come without pitfalls. While Linux graced early models, manufacturers turned to Windows to allow the devices to run popular programs, and in turn make them more marketable.

However, at the same time, Windows is expensive to put on the netbook. As these devices sell at prices typically well below $500, a non-Windows model could viably sell for under $200, say analysts.

There is no charge to use Android at the moment, a move by Google to spur quick adoption of its product.

Will it work? I’m guessing it probably won’t, unless Google can figure out how to overcome the software hurdle. While these PCs are cheap, consumers have shown a preference for the familiar, and putting Windows on these netbooks have proven to be the kick in the pants netbooks needed.

Heck, I’m a Mac guy and I have seriously been considering an Acer Aspire One everytime I walk by it at Wal-Mart. The price is attractive, and that would be great for conferences.

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IE 8.1 Leaks, Microsoft Cozies Up to Firefox

Posted by Ed Oswald on March 31, 2009 at 9:39 am

[UPDATE FROM HARRY: Smashing Magazine–which I like–has a wacky sense of humor. And maybe it’s April Fools Day where it is, or close enough.]

Builds of IE 8.1 have leaked out into the wild, and while it is not going to be a release that users will notice much difference visually, underneath the hood significant changes have been made which will enhance the user experience.

Security is a big focus with this point release. The SmartScreen and Cross-site scripting filters are improved greatly. Whereas IE 8 successfully caught on average 75% of all occurences of malware and phishing, IE 8.1 has increased that to 96%.

The browser also adheres to web standards better than its predecessor, scoring a 71 out of 100 in the Acid3 test. For what its worth, my Firefox 3 browser on Mac also scores a 71 out of 100. So the two browsers appear now to be at parity.

JavaScript has been improved, and will load faster. In addition, a user will be able to select multiple browser engines from which to render pages from, which would be useful to not only the developer but the user as well when a page seems to not work correctly.

Other features include functionality that allows the user to replace a sites CSS style sheet with a custom one for better readability, and a server-side code decompiler. As you can see, quite a bit for both the developer and consumer to show on.

However, probably the most exciting new feature in IE 8.1 is the support for Firefox Extensions. Yep, you heard that right. While Microsoft warns that not all plugins will work, many do so flawlessly. This is definitely a shot across the bow of Mozilla, and it will be interesting to see how they respond.

(Hat tip: Smashing Magazine)

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Study Finds 25% of App Store Apps Pirated

Posted by Ed Oswald on March 31, 2009 at 8:40 am

iPhone developer analytics company Medialets studied piracy on the iPhone, and found a surprising number of applications on the App Store have likely been pirated. Of the 25,000 or so on the service, approximated 5,000 of them have been cracked, allowing users to use them for free.

Some applications are being pirated at as much as a 100-to-1 ratio. Obviously, that developer is losing a ton of money. Apple is not commenting on the situation, and its also not clear exactly how much piracy is going on in the App Store.

Personally, this is the first time I’m even hearing you could pirate these apps, and I’m sure it is for quite a few other individuals. But apparently its on BitTorrent. If you see a file called “X-Mas iBrain Pack,” it contains 808 cracked apps in a 5GB+ file. Sites have also cropped up across the Web hosting as many as several thousand pirated apps for download.

While some are seeing their profits decimated by piracy, others are saying its such an insignificant problem that they’re not concerned with it. I’m going to take a lucky guess and say the most overpriced apps are likely the most pirated.

Some developers are charging a bit much for some of their apps in relation to their capabilities.

(Update: We’d like to apologize to Brian Chen at Wired. A link to his piece was not included in our coverage as it should have been. Be sure to take a look at his take.)

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Twitter Fiddles with Replies.. Err "Mentions"

Posted by Ed Oswald on March 30, 2009 at 9:21 pm

Twitter has fiddled a bit with how it handles those @ replies in a change it says “better reflects how folks are using Twitter now.” Whereas before the @ reply was used at the beginning in a direct reply to the twittee(?), now users are employing the feature in different ways.

For example, instead of a reply, a tweet may include the tweetname of that user as a reference, such as “I’m sitting here blogging with @harrymccracken on @technologizer” which isn’t a direct reply, but more a mention per se, thus the new term (we are shameless about promoting our twitter accounts here aren’t we? Sorry couldn’t resist throwing myself in there.).

Thus, the new Mentions tab, which replaces the Replies tab and is now listed as your twitter account name, will show these indirect tweets as well.

I kind of like this new feature. However, I’d much rather like it if they’d seperate these indirect ones from my direct ones. Especially if your a popular twitterer, you could have hundreds of users mentioning you every day. Your legitimate direct tweets would get lost in the mess.

Still, I think its good Twitter is going to let us know when we’re getting talked about. I can see the positives in that, too.

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Here We Go Again: Macs Are About Quality, Not Price

Posted by Ed Oswald on March 30, 2009 at 9:18 am

Microsoft’s “Lauren” ad continues to fan the flames across the blogosphere, rekindling the old Mac vs. PC debate anew. The central theme is price. Somehow bloggers are attempting to say somehow Lauren is right, proving some as yet undiscovered notion about this age old battle.

Along with this are trotted out some important looking statistics showing what a great disparity is between the two. If you take NPD’s numbers at face value, we’re lead to believe the Mac user pays a horrific $900 premium to own one of Cupertino’s machines.

There is just so much wrong with this way of looking at it to prove a point that its almost silly. First, comparing these two systems on price alone doesn’t work. By and large, Macs come with much more features for those “premiums,” so comparing the two is a bit like Apples and oranges.

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Is Microsoft Set to Abandon its Top-Down Zune Approach?

Posted by Ed Oswald on March 29, 2009 at 10:30 pm

That could be true, if what we’re hearing about the buzz within Microsoft these days is correct. The Zune for all intents and purposes has been anything but a success for Microsoft. Redmond saw that Apple was wildly successful in controlling the experience from the top down, and decided to try to duplicate it.

In the process it all but abandoned its partners, casting PlaysForSure aside in favor of its own single store proprietary system a la Apple’s. The change all but meant certain death for just about every store that wasn’t either the Zune MarketPlace or iTunes, and most device manufacturers.

Fast forward to today. We’re now nearly three years out from Microsoft’s initial launch, and the company has very little to show for it. iPods still outsell Zunes by a 20-to-1 (or more) margin, roughly the same as it was at launch.

So what is Microsoft to do? According to our sources, the company is currently discussing marketing strategies going forward. But the most interesting aspect of this talk is that Redmond is apparently sharing information with key partners for the first time in the platform’s short history.

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Why Microsoft's "Lauren" Ad is Offensive

Posted by Ed Oswald on March 28, 2009 at 1:11 pm

I noticed some tweets (join me on Twitter’, @edoswald) over the past several days regarding Microsoft’s latest ad from those on Redmond’s side of the aisle. One of them specifically told “Mac fanbois” to “GROW UP,” so I decided to post this to explain why Microsoft’s latest ad is not only factually loose, but offensive as well.

“Lauren” is given $1,000 to go and get a PC. Within 10 seconds, Microsoft’s already going for the gusto. She goes into the “Mac store” — red flag here already, anyone who is even remotely interested in a Mac knows it’s the Apple Store — and within seconds is out saying how the only under $1,000 unit is the white Macbook.

Okay, true enough there Lauren. But in the car, she then proceeds to take it where I think the ad shouldn’t have gone, and where I began to have a problem with it. “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person,” she exclaims. Wow, just wow.

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