By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
The headline is my answer to the question “Is Steve Ballmer Really the Best Choice to Run Microsoft’s Consumer Business?” asked by Kevin Tofel at GigaOM on May 25th. There are several good reasons why Ballmer is the right man at the right time, but one stands out. He turned around another important Microsoft product: Windows.
Read More...By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
The keyword for the introduction of Mozilla Firefox 3.5 was speed. That helped start a whole new race in which Firefox led early, but fell soon behind Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and later even Opera. Now with even Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 looking to erase the speed gap, and then some, a newly published Mozilla developers’ page characterizes Firefox 4 — whose first public betas may be only a few weeks away — as feature-laden.
Read More...By Jack M. Germain, E-Commerce Times
Voice-over-IP technology is getting a makeover, and service providers hope it will reinvent the industry. There’s a shift away from VoIP toward hosted unified communications — that is, integrated voice, instant messenger, e-mail, workflow applications, and procurement.
Eight companies formed the Cloud Communications Alliance at the Cloud Computing Expo held last month in New York City, banding together to help drive the development of cloud-based unified communications.
Read More...By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
Whether the “Windows era” is genuinely over for PCs is a matter of some debate; but the last week in both US and international markets is making clear that the dominance of PCs as technology platforms is now fully challenged by mobile devices. Today is premiere day for Apple’s iPad in Europe and Asia, and though early sales numbers have yet to be tabulated, when China Daily touts the success of the premiere as an event, it looks pretty likely that sales will live up to expectations.
Read More...By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
In a move that may end up drastically scaling back what Facebook had hoped last month would be a redefinition of the Web itself, the social service will soon begin rolling out simplified privacy controls, according to a blog post today from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The new controls may make it easier for Facebook users to limit the extent to which the system shares their personal information with others, especially including other Web sites.
Read More...By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
When a massive Microsoft corporate reorganization on September 20, 2005 vaulted Robbie Bach into the role of President of the Entertainment & Devices division, the explanation at the time was to enable the company to focus on devices where the goal was to promote devices, and on platforms where the goal was to promote devices. Xbox was a device, whatever MP3 player the company would decide to produce was a device, and obviously cell phones are devices should Microsoft ever choose to enter that business in earnest.