Thirdpipe has been espousing for about a year now that the landscape of computing was changing. Most of which was enabled by what broadband services we have in place. Sometimes it feels like being the lone tree falling and asking the question — did anyone hear us fall? Well evidently that is the case –

This week marks several important events:

• Google announced their broad Web-as-a-platform developer toolset.

• Microsoft showcased part of their Windows 7 user interface and set the date for their PDC which indicates their new OS, Windows 7, is approaching Beta.

• In addition, I and a number of the folks I work with are seeing what appears to be a rather massive move to the Mac platform, which hasn’t seen this kind of growth since the 80s.

• Finally, Linux is beginning to get some actual traction, showing up on a number of low cost “Netbook” offerings and MID (Mobile Internet Devices); it is starting to look like even this platform may have some legs.

I have not seen this level of competition before and Microsoft has never appeared more exposed. In my lifetime I have never seen a major vendor allow the kind of attack-marketing Apple is using without challenge. And, coupled with initial problems with Windows Vista, Microsoft suddenly looks like they are in a fight for the desktop the likes of which they – and we – have never seen.

The market and its users are making a shift. Right now CPU power is the number #1 criteria. However that is rapidly being supplanted by mobility currently at number #2 on the ;user preference list. Laptops displaced desktops in sales several years ago. Now UMPC’s are coming on strong with tools like the eePC. That mobility is favoring OS’s with a small footprint and whose technical ecology can transcend across multiple platforms. Only two systems can do that — Linux and Google Desktop.

Regardless of the snaz factor for Windows 7 it will represent the evolutionary pinnacle of an waning genera of computing.

Linky.

Not to slam our current crop of tech and business reporters, but it’s refreshing to see an interview with a tech CEO done to the point with relevance. Done at the D6 conference, Om Malik Questioned Mr Bezos on how Amazon web services got stated and where it’s going. Om also brought Wall Street’s complete ignorance of the significance of the cloud computing wave into focus.

• How and when Amazon began its cloud computing effort.
• Why Amazon has become an innovator with Amazon Web Services and how it relates to their core business of being an online retailer.
• Whether or not Wall Street recognizes Amazon’s cloud efforts.
• What’s next for Amazon Web Services.
• Whether or not Amazon has plans for a VC fund or for cloud computing startups. (GigaOm)

Computerwold has a very intriguing article. The jest of it is businesses are encourging ‘casual telecommuting’ in an effort to support a reduction in commuting and drive down fuel prices. It is in companies interests to do so as they too consume fuel. –

A Reuters report today highlights organizations that are cutting back the number of days employees are required to physically show up at work because of soaring gas prices. Even employees who are required to be on-site in order to work, such as janitors, are being cut down to four-day workweeks to save gas. White collar workers, of course, are being allowed, encouraged or forced to stay home once a week or more often and telecommute.

One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that’s accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it’s OK once a week, why isn’t it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with “casual Friday” — its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, “extreme telecommuting” — working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback — becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you’re out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn’t really matter where you are, does it?

“… it doesn’t really matter where you are, does it?”, well yes it does unfortunately. That is if you are going to telecommute then you need a broadband connection on a fairly regular basis. Which is the rub. Say my company said I only had to show up for a video conference once a week the rest done via telecommute. To pull that off I have to be located in cities providing the service. For example here is a map of FIOS deployment.. Were I to want to be in Denver I would be out of luck.

The point? If We the American People want to put a stake thru the hearts of the middle east then we need to complete a transcontinental broadband system. We did it with the railroads in the 1800’s, the phone system in the 1900’s. It is time to do the same in the 2100’s. Till we have the top 500 metro markets covered in broadband and wireless access nearly everywhere we will not achieve the dream of ‘extreme telecommuting’ and deliver a death blow to both high gas prices and middle east geopolitics.

The article does have a kernel of opportunity though. The gas situation may just be the point at which corporations do finally figure out that management by proximity is not the most efficient method of management. If that occurs there will be an explosion in cottage industry employment. With location decoupled from employment results becomes more important than schmoozing as companies will have to develop result oriented metric management styles. We can only hope.

Drive bits not cars.

Compterworld article.

While the average broadband user inthe UK fares better than his American counterpart, there is still little serious competition in fixed line access. Plus, the UK’s 2 wild and crazy guys can behave just as badly as ours. As further proof that a doupoly does not foster adequate competition to best serve the the public good, the UK cable monopoly is now mimicing the American one.

The decision follows recent regional testing of extended restrictions in London and the North West. Previously the brakes were only slammed on for five hours if limits were exceeded at any point between 4pm and 9pm.

Now, “M” customers who bust 900MB during the day will have their theoretical maximum download halved from 2Mbit/s to 1Mbit/s. “L” and “XL” users’ usual headline speeds of 10MBit/s and 20MBit/s will be slowed by three quarters if they break daytime download limits of 2400MB and 6000MB respectively.

The download thresholds for the daytime throttling period are double those of the evening period, which also restricts uploads.(The Register)

To Virgin’s credit they are investing in providing 50MBPS speeds and are spelling out how heavy users access will be throttled. I’m not giving them a pass, they are doing this purely because they can. With more competition Virgin would be building more capacity and managing users less. How do I know? Look to Paris. No provider there is throttling or complaining about heavy users. What makes Paris different is robust competiton.

Arun Sarin is stepping down as head cheese at Voda, effective July. Vittorio Colao will be the successor to Arun. It will be interesting to see if this change of leadership makes any changes to the Verizon Wireless - Voda relationship. –

Vodafone Group Plc will say goodbye to its fearless leader. After five years as CEO, Arun Sarin is retiring at the end of July. Vittorio Colao will take his place; Colao has been with Vodafone for almost two years, coming on as head of the carrier’s European business.

During Sarin’s stint with Vodafone he oversaw the acquisition of Hutchison Essar in India, the largest foreign investment made in the country, and expanded Vodafone into emerging markets including Romania, Czech Republic and Turkey.

More at RCR.

There’s a little known (before now) thriving business of attacking open Bittorrent servers the reduce MPAA and the RIAA’s “losses”. While I have no way of being certain, it would seem that the one company in question could be operating automated attack and destroy systems that cannot differentiate between illicit and legitimate trackers. The liability should be huge, and the RIAA and MPAA have already accumulated a huge karma debt.

CEO Jim Louderback revealed today that the outage was caused by a massive denial of service attack that he says was perpetrated by MediaDefender, a file-sharing mitigation firm that gets paid by Big Content to disrupt peer-to-peer networks.

A SYN flood aimed at Revision3’s BitTorrent tracker clogged the company’s tubes and brought down all of its web services. The traffic logs indicated that the network was getting slammed by over 8,000 packets every second. Revision3 tracked the source of the packets and discovered that the attack originated from MediaDefender, at which point Louderback confronted the company’s executives. ArtistDirect CEO Dimitri Villard and MediaDefender vice president Ben Grodsky admitted to Louderback that they had been exploiting the lax security configuration of Revision3’s BitTorrent tracker and using it to conduct decoying operations, but they disavowed knowledge of the denial of service attack and claimed that their servers were only pinging Revision3 once every three hours. (Ars Technica)

Here’s an undeniable fact broadcasters and pay TV operators are going to have to face - sooner rather than later: Downloaded and streaming content will continue displace an increasing number of the eyeballs they once kept easily in their domain. The main reason is simple, TVoIP provides a direct channel from the producer / distributor to the consumer. Producers can sell ads based on actual views instead of guesses, and a much larger pool of advertisers will have access to a new content channel they could never afford to buy in the scheduled broadcast model. Programs that need a little more time to find their audience will get a chance. Recently the trend for producers of premium content for MSO’s have been offering on demand streams of some of their most popular shows. With more mass appeal content available free and easy on demand, the more viewers will take advantage of viewing on their schedule instead of the broadcasters’.

Until recently, few of the main made-for-cable programs have been available to watch in full over the Internet, even as broadcast networks have started streaming full episodes of most of their shows. The reason is that cable and satellite systems pay large fees to networks for what they have seen as exclusive rights to their content. (Their deals with broadcast networks are less restrictive.)

In recent months, that has started to change as programs such as USA’s “Monk” and “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne” on TBS become available on the Internet. But many other signature cable programs, like ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and CNN’s “Larry King Live” are not regularly Webcast in their entirety.

That’s why my eyebrows jumped when I saw the announcement last week that full episodes of three Comedy Central shows — “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report” and “South Park” — will start being Webcast, both on MTV-owned sites and on the Fancast site from Comcast. (Comedy Central, which is owned by Viacom’s MTV Networks unit, has been Webcasting “South Park” episodes for a few months.) (New York Times)

One troubling thing to consider as this develops. Most of the access providers are also pay TV providers. Never before has being in both businesses presented so many conflicts. If we won’t undo the duopoly, we may need to force them to spin off their pay TV businesses just to provide an opportunity for new methods of content delivery to have a chance to succeed.

At the Google I/O developers conference Android was part of the keynote presentation. Members in attendance indicate it stole the show. –

GoogleIOGoogle wanted to talk about software engineering on the open web at its developer event on Wednesday, but the demo of its Android operating system for next-generation mobile phones ended up drawing the most attention.

The company used the keynote address at the Google I/O developer conference to introduce the user interface and several key features of its upcoming Android mobile operating system for smart phones. The attendees, numbering over 3,000, were blown away by the slick interface which, even in its early stages, looks robust and feature-rich enough to challenge the iPhone.

One feature in particular — a compass and accelerometer-powered interface for Google Maps Street View that rotates the map on the phone’s display as you spin around — drew a big round of applause from the crowd. Other features, like the powerful web browser and iPhone-like customizable desktops were greeted with gasps of pleasure.

Ah, this summer could be interesting if Google pops with models from the OHA partners.

Linky

Generally we would cover this in our sister publication Tightwad Technica. But the changes on the wireless front for the Ibex release of Ubuntu deserves a mention here. Mark Shuttleworth breaks it here –

During the 8.10 cycle we will be venturing into interesting new territory, and we’ll need the rugged adventurousness of a mountain goat to navigate tricky terrain. Our desktop offering will once again be a focal point as we re-engineer the user interaction model so that Ubuntu works as well on a high-end workstation as it does on a feisty little subnotebook. We’ll also be reaching new peaks of performance - aiming to make the mobile desktop as productive as possible.

A particular focus for us will be pervasive internet access, the ability to tap into bandwidth whenever and wherever you happen to be. No longer will you need to be a tethered, domesticated animal - you’ll be able to roam (and goats do roam!) the wild lands and access the web through a variety of wireless technologies. We want you to be able to move from the office, to the train, and home, staying connected all the way.

My view is that this capability should have been part of the Hardy Heron LTS desktop release. I mean really, even preppy Puppy Linux had wireless enabled since the 3.0 release 18 months ago. XP has had the capability since what? SP1? That’s some 3 years ago.

But this release may bring some benefits. The configuration setup for the drivers may bring some convergence to the whole wireless drivers front. Right now it is a bit of a mess as each distro essentially develop their own methodologies for implementing the user interface. Linux would benefit from a Anaconda-like tool kit for wireless.

Further reading on Ibex here. Ibex will be in release come October of this year.

Blogging even this blog, in a sense is a second source effort. My partner and I attempt to gather the relevant bits, and piece together a whole cloth. “We do the filtering and highlighting so you don’t have to on the tech scene.” But this happens on a larger scale on the net. Hence the observations at the blog Brain Terminal on the main stream press –

Although there are bloggers who have done excellent first-hand reporting, most bloggers are not equipped to compete with the core competency of large news-gathering organizations. Instead, bloggers tend to function as filters, amplifiers, analyzers and fact-checkers for stories that have been reported (and under-reported) by the establishment media.

To put it not-so-flatteringly, we bloggers are parasitic; we synthesize our product by relying on output from the establishment media. But we’re symbiotic parasites, and our existence benefits the media in numerous ways, not the least of which is by driving traffic (and therefore ad revenue) to media websites.

Which in the main is essentially true. But Mr. Maloney also points out the core problem —

Yet under the guise of “news analysis,” “putting things in context,” giving “perspective” and “helping you understand,” the news media insists on wrapping what should be its unique product—hard-to-gather facts—in packaging that makes their product look similar to everything else that’s available online for free.

How can media outlets get themselves out of this predicament? They should either embrace opinion journalism fully and drop the pretense of objectivity, or they should get out of the opinion business altogether if they insist on being seen as objective.

The first option would have outlets finally own up to their biases and admit to being in the opinion business, but then they’d compete even more directly with bloggers. This would also pull the media further away from the market that their news-gathering infrastructure is uniquely positioned to serve. But at least by being truthful with news consumers about the perspectives that shape their presentation of the news, some of the media’s tattered credibility might be restored.

To be blunt the Press has given up hard reporting grudgingly sucked out of unwilling public servants. It goes so far as to not even emulate the Woodward-Bernstein mode of the WP in favor of making sure they have ‘access’ so they can get the White House presser. The Press is SUPPOSED to have an adversary relationship with City Hall not be in bed with them.

That folks is why readership, subscription rates and ad revenue is down for the dailies. All of them could have made the transition to a digital representation of themselves. But even their digital product is lacking in gum shoe reporting.

Linky.