San Francisco - The web 2.0 Summit , which wraps here yesterday, has attracted some of the biggest in the industry including, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook, Adobe along with media companies like General electric, comcast etc...

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile.

The last few year have seen dramatic change as we shifted our lives to the Internet, but now it's all about mobile. If you don't have one yet, you will soon. Smartphone technology is ramping faster than any other technology. More and More people are switching to smart phone devices and it is all happening in a recession. Talking about recession hum, Apple just reported record revenue and sales. Google said its revenue rose to 7% year to year, and Microsoft just launch windows 7 which will dramatically increase sales.

New ways to pay

Is it possible to say that innovations as young as the ATM are already becoming obsolete? That's what Scott Thompson president of Ebay's electronic payment service, paypal thinks. He came to announce the opening of Paypal to outside developers, as Apple did with the iphone, so they will be new way to send money believe me. Developer can build things as simple as payment apps for social networkking web sites, or payroll for foreign country. You can pay for items from your phone in your living room.

TV

Cable TV wants to open up too. the old way Subscribe and get access is slowly but surely dying. The new way Subscribe, and watch any show in the lineup on the internetat anytime, whenever whatever is coming. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts announced that a web 2.0 for its 24 million subscriber via its fancast website. They would have access by the end of the year.

Search

Microsoft 's Bing search engine which is hopping to give rigorous search competition to Google for the first time in years, announced non exclusive deals with both twitter and facebook to provide search results At Bing.com/twitter the conversation can be viewed and searched. Additionally, tweets will be part of the search results. Microsoft showed an example of a search on Singer John Legend, showing a pictureof the performer followed by two of his recent Twitter to include its updates in Bing search results.

In a near future, maybe we won't need a remote control for the TV, keys for your car, ATM cards to carry around, Access card for work, Web cam on your Pc etc...all you will have to do is grab your phone.

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Microsoft on Thursday took the wraps off Bing, the rebranded and rebuilt search engine formerly code-named Kumo, designed to replace Live Search. It's a solid improvement over the previous search product, and it beats Google in important areas. It will help Microsoft gain share in the search business. It's surprisingly competitive with Google.

In search presentation, Bing wins. It uses technology from Powerset (a search technology company Microsoft acquired) to display refined versions of your query down the left side of the page. For example, I searched for the game "Fallout 3" on Google and Bing. While Google gave me good results, Bing gave me a menu of "related searches," that included Walkthrough, News, and so on. 

I planned to write this story with the headline, "Bing isn't Better," but the new engine won me over. 

The new game in search is parsing information and displaying it in the engine itself (see Wolfram Alpha for the extreme example of this). Both Google and Bing, and other search products, have areas where they will collate and format information for you, instead of just linking you to external pages where the data reside. Bing does an extremely good job at this in several popular areas -- like product reviews, movie listings, weather, travel, and stock prices. 

While the service doesn't reveal all its riches at once, it rewards exploration and yields pleasant surprises to users who poke around. 

Google keeps improving in the area of in-search collation and display as well, but Bing makes Google look complacent, and that's not good for Google. For the moment, Bing's on top in this game. Try this search engine. I do not think you will regret it.

 Related Links

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2929

 

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We've been on the trail of the Verizon Hub since way back when it was called the Verizon One, in fact, but it's just been officially announced, and there are plenty of details to report now. The system boasts a 7-inch touchscreen display, and will work with Verizon wireless subscribers handset(s) to eliminate the need for a landline (people still have those!?) The idea here is that the hub can sync to your calendar, contacts, maps, traffic and weather reports via broadband. It can also send and receive text messages, and do all kinds of cute little tasks like send driving directions to your phone. Subscribers have to live in an E911-capable area, and will be able to bring any phone number with them if they want to sign up for new service. The hardware's going to cost $200 (after a $50 mail-in rebate) with a subscription fee of $35 per month -- which comes with unlimited minutes and texts to and from the device. It'll be available starting February 1st. Get ready.

In the CE world, success is all about timing. Verizon debuted its Verizon One gadget years ago, but that was before the widget craze, before FiOS was a household word, and before streaming radio and digital photo frames raised the profile of non-computer, Internet-connected devices.

In its latest form, the Verizon One is now called the Verizon Hub, and we got a chance to see it during our recent visit to Verizon HQ. I love this thing. In brief, it’s a cordless-phone-plus-widget-station that lets you make calls, get news, weather and traffic, share photos and control your FiOS TV (Motorola) set-tops. There are plenty of things it doesn’t do, like let you surf the Web, but that’s what your computer is for. And with the Verizon Hub you won’t get distracted by all of the unread emails in your inbox when you just want to check traffic.

The Verizon Hub has a gorgeous display, a POTS connection (no VoIP), Wi-Fi and an Ethernet port. I’m drooling over the device, but ultimately I think its success will depend on cost. This is a whole new gadget category and it will take a reasonable price point to get the unwashed masses to try it out. That said, if there was ever a time when the Verizon Hub could be successful, it’s now. Lots of people use widgets and RSS feeds, and lots of people like to show off photo slideshows. This isn’t a complete paradigm shift anymore.

 

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"My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile," says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone's profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation. If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.

Facebook has a history of protecting profiles from outsiders. The site once sent cease-and-desist letters to two of Valleywag's sister blogs for publishing certain student profiles.

The site does not allow regular users to see which profiles other users have seen. While one third-party application lets users voluntarily make their profile-visiting known, no application allows one to "spy" on the activity of an unknowing user.

Checking who's viewed a profile may be how Facebook found the tipster who violated their terms of service by sending Valleywag Steve Ballmer's profile. But were they violating their own terms?

Well, Facebook's privacy policy doesn't explicitly reserve or waive employees' right to check out your profile for any reason. Of course, the practice still reeks of skunkery — it's one thing to check profiles in the course of business, but these people are looking up records for kicks. This is a company with $150 million in projected revenues this year and a gigantic ad deal with Microsoft, not a corner video store. The privacy of millions is at stake. Google clearly promises not to crawl through mail or search records with anything but a computer program, and even AOL apologized for releasing semi-anonymous search data and violating its privacy policy.

We have no idea what else employees can see. Do they look at your messages? Your private gifts? Who knows? (Really, who knows? Email me or the tipline. Unlike some, we'll protect your identity.)

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At least that's what the company claims. The most private search engine on the web that does not store IP addresses or tracks your searches like Google. 

http://www.ixquick.com/ 

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Thursday, The Wall Street Journal issued a report concerning Dell’s new smartphone, about which the media have been speculating for a while, revealing that the company had had a team of engineers working on the gadgets for over a year from a Chicago office.

The paper, quoting sources with knowledge in the matter, said that the team had developed prototypes modeled on Google's Android operating system and Microsoft Windows Mobile.

One of the models has a touch screen but no physical keyboard, similar to Apple Incorporated’s iPhone, whereas the other is fitted with a keypad that slides out from underneath the screen, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Nevertheless, a Dell representative stated that the company had not offered any information regarding plans to develop a smartphone, adding that they had not made any commitment to anything.

Despite this, The Wall Street Journal informed that the team of engineers had spent the best part of the previous year meeting with suppliers of phone components, phone software companies, along with Asian phone manufacturers.

Even though Dell has taken a leave of absence from the handheld business more than a year and a half ago, there are events indicating that it is planning a return, among which purchasing of streaming-audio software maker Zing Systems back in August.

Currently, given that the demand for PC has been weakening, turning to the development of smartphones seems like a good idea, especially since the handheld market is still a growing one, according to Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst.


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Take a look : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

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Sony’s Blu-ray fiasco is the gift that keeps on giving. The latest gift: handing the game console market to Microsoft and Nintendo.

The Blu-ray albatross
The Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required) reports that US sales of the PS3 fell 19% last month from a year earlier - while rivals Wii and Xbox are likely to see a rise.

The money quote:

Sony’s strategy of selling a pricey game machine with advanced features and cutting-edge components appears to be backfiring as a deepening recession has U.S. consumers more price sensitive than ever.

If Sony doesn’t close the gap with its rivals, it could risk making the PS3 an afterthought to game publishers. . . . At the end of September, the Wii had a wide lead with nearly 35 million units sold since its launch in 2006 compared with about 22 million Xbox 360 consoles and 17 million PS3 machines. Nintendo last month sold 2 million Wii machines in the U.S., while Microsoft sold 836,000 Xbox 360s and Sony sold 378,000 PS3s . . . . 

A high price for Blu-ray
The PS3’s problem is price: $399 vs $250 for Wii and $199 for Xbox Arcade. Even at $399, Sony loses money on every PS3 sold!

The included Blu-ray player is a big chunk of that cost. Key to Blu-ray’s victory over Toshiba’s HD DVD, Blu-ray is now sinking the PS3 - in a more lucrative market.

Blu-ray also slowed the PS3 introduction as it raised costs. Who OK’d risking a multi-billion dollar game business to win an optical disk format war?

Feature creep or Christmas tree?
All tech companies place big bets on new technology. The trick is to choose tech that will result in a visible customer benefit. 

To be fair to Blu-ray, the PS3 was festooned with technoporn like the broadband cell processor - great on paper, hell to develop for - and a large disk that hurt sales. As the Wii proves, most people want to have fun, not geek bragging rights.

If an engineer is someone who can do for a nickel what any fool can do for a dollar, the PS3 designers weren’t engineers, or marketers either. They crammed the PS3 with technology that didn’t make a difference on the screen - all potential, no kinetic.

The Storage Bits take
Sony’s battling fiefdoms have created the worst of both worlds: a struggling 3rd place finish in the game market; and an optical format that has so many self-inflicted wounds that it won’t succeed before better - faster, higher capacity and cheaper - optical storage arrives.

Blu-ray’s costly licensing requirements mean that small producers won’t move to it anytime soon. That keeps media volumes low and media prices high: at $0.40/GB it is 4x what magnetic disk costs and only a quarter of what the far more convenient flash thumb drives are running. 

Meanwhile, the download market keeps moving forward as codecs improve, broadband speeds rise and studio execs learn about the Internet. The bricks-and-mortar crowd wants Blu-ray to succeed, but Sony has driven itself into a ditch during an economic hurricane. 

Fixing that problem will take more intelligence and creativity - and I’m not talking root kits - than Sony has shown in years. Time to focus, guys. Taking back market share from Microsoft isn’t easy, but it can be done. Good luck.

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Facebook is now pulling in nearly twice as many unique visitors worldwide as News Corp.-owned competitor Myspace, according to new statistics from ComScore.

Roughly 222 million people around the world visited Facebook in December versus 125 million people for MySpace. (CNET’s Caroline McCarthy notes that Facebook pegs its active user count at about 150 million.)

The statistics come just two weeks after ComScore statistics indicated that MySpace was still bigger in the U.S., measured by pageviews and time spent on the site.

On a worldwide scale, though, Facebook edges out Myspace, according to the new figures.

If there’s one thing to note, though, it’s that Myspace has had the jump on Facebook with regard to revenue. Ever since News Corp. invested in the site a few years ago, it has been able to monetize its audience much better than Facebook does, plain and simple.

Facebook’s challenge, of course, is to take advantage of its larger (probably still more affluent) audience, from which it has collected an incredible amount of information from. That information — including surfing habits, thanks to Facebook Connect — could help Facebook get a better sense of its audience.
 

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