Microsoft admits Windows 7 blackouts Mac OS X

After the successful launch and fast gaining popularity around the world, Windows 7 has cast a smile on the face of Microsoft employees. However, on the other hand, Simon Aldous, partner group manager of Microsoft, said that Windows 7 looks similar to Mac OS X.



As is known that Wndows 7 has been standardized to work in a variety of hardware configurations. On the other hand, Mac OS X Snow Leopard also has been optimized to work in certain configurations. Equations look and feel of both operating systems may not be viewed as the number of users. However, Aldous makes a surprising statement, that is done in Windows 7, whether the traditional format or formats touch, dalah graphic inspiration from Mac OS X.

Graphical Windows 7 looks similar as well with Windows Vista, but more 'borrow' appearance Mac OS X, added Aldous. However, Aldous also argue that it has added imporovisasi GUI (Graphical User Inetrface) Windows 7, which was built on the Vista core technology is stable, which is more stable than the Mac platform. Yet, somehow saw this case, the war between the Snow Leopard Mac OS X and Windows 7 will continue.

Microsoft’s Fight Against Fat Fingers

Stuart Isett for The New York Times Mike Seltzer of Microsoft Research demonstrates technology that allows drivers to interact with devices using speech and touch.

At Microsoft, they call it “the fat finger problem.”

Chubby digits make it tough to work the screens on computing devices, which seem to get smaller every year. Your finger bumbles about, often covering up the very information that you’re trying to see.

Researchers at Microsoft think they’ve come up with a way to solve the fat-finger issue by letting people manipulate the back of a device with their finger while still looking at the front screen. It’s a project called Nanotouch and was one of many that Microsoft had on display this week at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., during the TechFest event.

An early incarnation of the nanotouch technology could have people shuffling through songs on their cellphone or selecting contacts while touching the back of the device, where sensors follow the fingers’ movements. Patrick Baudisch, a Microsoft researcher, said this could be especially useful with games where you want to shuffle a character or object around the screen without your hands getting in the way of the action.

But the real motivation behind the technology is to pave the way for smaller and smaller devices that remain functional. Mr. Baudisch envisions women pinning electronic baubles onto their clothes to handle things like appointments instead of carrying along a proper calendar or phone.

“In my vision, you move away from always having something in your pocket,” Mr. Baudisch said. “You want things that allow for fashionable outfits and that blend into the clothes.”

Microsoft can make 8mm screens that are still functional with this technology, and the company expects unpredictable uses for its wares.

“We feel the cellphone is not the end-all, be-all of miniaturization,” Mr. Baudisch said.

A number of Microsoft’s researchers have work under way exploring new interfaces between man and machine.

For a while now, Microsoft has demonstrated its Surface computer, which allows people to manipulate objects on a tabletop computer. Such a product could be used in a restaurant to let people shuffle through menus and even place their credit cards on the screen to make their payments. At home, you could use a Surface computer for games or to flick through music and movies.

Now, Microsoft is looking to extend the Surface concept by pulling objects off the screen through a project called Second Light.

Stuart Isett for The New York Times Steve Hodges explains research on Second Light technology at Microsoft.

The technology behind Second Light is a bit tricky, but Microsoft is essentially sending two different sets of images from a projector up through the Surface display. The display on the device is configured to pick up one image. Then you can hold something as simple as a piece of paper in the air over the device to gather the second image.

According to Steve Hodges, another Microsoft researcher, doctors could use this type of technology for cancer detection. They could, for example, display a 3-D image of a breast scan on the tabletop display and then pull out parts of the scan via the secondary display, changing the angles of the image to look for tough-to-spot tumors.

“This is bringing the user interface into the real world,” Mr. Hodges said.

Again, the mind boggles at possible gaming applications for the technology where people could be doing one thing on their own screens while also having a shared vision of the game on the central, tabletop display.

One technology that’s probably closer to reaching consumers is the Commute UX software.

Microsoft has already worked with Ford on in-car software for handling some communications and media tasks, but the company says it can spice up this type of software by adding new layers of sophistication.

The prototype software has, for example, added more smarts to its voice recognition. If you say, ‘Play Bruce Springsteen,’ the software can ascertain that you’re probably talking about an artist rather than a song. The upshot is that you don’t have to remember the name of every song stored inside your car to play it via voice. The software will help you with some of the dirty work.

In addition, the software can pick up incoming messages sent to your cellphone, read them aloud and fire back a response. Microsoft has studied the most common responses to messages sent while people are driving -– usually stuff like, ‘I’m running late’ or ‘Be there in five minutes’ — and will present you with common, easy replies, so that you can stay focused on driving.

Microsoft has moved to create a digital copy of car manuals as well, which people can again navigate by voice. If you ask about how to install a car seat, the display will present a how-to video.

One last demonstration showed off technology that could add some smarts to cellphones.

People could point their phone camera at, say, a restaurant and receive its menu or aim it at a bus stop and receive an interactive route planner.

Despite the recession, Microsoft intends to keep investing billions into research and development efforts. The company is part of an ever-shrinking number of technology titans willing to finance a wide array of projects that may or may not pan out.

IBM to buy Chinese e-mail company

Computing giant IBM has announced its intention to acquire a Chinese e-mail and messaging company.

Hong Kong-based firm Outblaze sells hosted multilingual e-mail and messaging services for other service providers, telecommunications companies, and corporations to operate under their own brands.

Outblaze will become part of IBM Lotus' Bluehouse project, IBM's online-business and social-networking and collaboration service, IBM announced on Thursday. Bluehouse is currently in open beta testing.

"The acquisition of these Outblaze assets further demonstrates Lotus' commitment to delivering secure, scalable online solutions, and will help accelerate delivery of collaborative services, with little to no IT involvement," Bob Picciano, the general manager of IBM Lotus Software, said in a statement.

Security experts warned that companies considering moving to hosted e-mail services in developing countries should think about where their data will reside, and choose their provider carefully. A report last week warned that emerging markets such as China are at greater risk of cybercrime, while the U.S. government warned in November that the Chinese government was using advanced cyberespionage techniques.

"With any hosted service, you have to do due diligence, look at the system and how it's being managed," said Andy Buss, a senior analyst at Canalys.

Buss recommended that businesses either use a trusted local company or one of the trusted larger providers, such as IBM, for hosted messaging services. The analyst added that as more workers start to rely on online tools, companies have to work out how to integrate tools and work flows.

Financial Scandal at Outsourcing Company Rattles a Developing Country

In an emotionally charged four-and-a-half page letter, Mr. Raju, the chairman and co-founder of one of India’s largest outsourcing companies, described to his board on Wednesday how a small discrepancy had mushroomed into one of the biggest scandals in Indian corporate history.

“What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years. It has attained unmanageable proportions as the size of company operations grew,” he wrote. “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.”

In the end, the scandal threatened to gobble up not just Mr. Raju, who resigned, but his company, Satyam Computer Services. Far beyond Satyam, it raised fears that similar problems might lurk in other Indian companies, particularly in its vaunted outsourcing industry.

“One only hopes that with the kind of scrutiny and the kind of focus this brings, everybody doesn’t end up being painted with the same brush,” said Lakshminarayana, the chief strategy officer for Wipro Technologies, which competes with Satyam.

The long-running fraud, which is being called India’s Enron, also raised questions about the vigilance of regulators in India and the United States.

Satyam serves as the back office for one-third of the Fortune 500, including some of the largest banks, manufacturers, health care and media companies in the world — handling things like computer systems and customer service for companies that include General Electric, Nestlé, Ford Motor, Cisco and the United States government.

In some cases, Satyam even acted as clients’ outsourced finance and accounting departments.

The fraud will make “people even more nervous about investing” in India and other developing markets, said Jacob Rees-Mogg, the lead manager with Somerset Capital Management, a fund that specializes in emerging markets.

India needs foreign investment more than ever. Though it has enjoyed 9 percent growth a year recently, that is expected to slow to 7 percent, at best, as the global economy cools. Housing prices are down, the country’s major stock index, the Sensex, is half what it was a year ago. And India’s government has little financial leeway for giant stimulus packages like those in China and the United States.

Outsourcing and information technology are crucial parts of the Indian economy. They provided local companies with $64 billion in revenues in 2008 and employed more than two million people directly, and millions more indirectly.

Mr. Raju said he had regularly falsified Satyam’s accounts as the company expanded from a small family-run firm into a back office giant with 53,000 workers in 66 countries.

Some of India’s biggest conglomerates started out as family-run companies, and analysts fear the taint of corruption from Satyam — poor governance, lax accounting controls and a lack of transparency — could sully any of those big companies for investors and customers.

Relatives often hold crucial management positions and sizable stakes in the companies. Foreign investors have begun to push for more outside representation on boards, and for families to give up controlling stakes they hold.

A huge piece of Satyam’s finances was a fantasy. Of the 53.6 billion rupees in cash and bank balances the company listed as assets at the end of its second quarter, 50.4 billion rupees ($1 billion), were nonexistent, according to Mr. Raju’s letter. Revenues for the quarter ended Sept. 30 were actually 20 percent lower than the 27 billion rupees reported, and the company’s profit for the quarter was just 10 percent of what it reported at the time.

Many analysts said it was unthinkable that Mr. Raju had acted without accomplices, and regulators in India, Europe and the United States were likely to take action against Satyam for false accounting. In addition to being listed in India, its shares have traded on the New York Stock Exchange since May 2001, and on Euronext since January 2008.

Satyam’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has audited the company since its NYSE listing, said it was “examining” Mr. Raju’s statement and could not comment further.

Many Satyam clients said they were studying the situation. Cisco said it did not expect any “material impact.”

The revelations could lead to a major shake-up in India’s outsourcing industry, as a nearly cashless Satyam struggles to meet payroll and other expenses. Satyam may be shut down, sold off in its entirety or broken into pieces, they say.

John C. McCarthy, an analyst with Forrester Research in New York, said Satyam’s clients were scrambling to find out “whether the fraud is intermingled” with their operations, and what their liabilities are.

“This happens like clockwork in the high-tech business,” he said. “Every three to four years there’s some financial scandal. It is because high-tech has traditionally been viewed by the financial analysts as a growth industry. There are huge pressures to maintain that growth, and not all companies have the management wherewithal to survive under those pressures.” In the short term, many Satyam clients will migrate to competition like Infosys and TCS, said analysts with Religare Hichens Harrison.

News of the scandal sent the Sensex index down 7 percent on Wednesday. Shares in Satyam fell about 78 percent. Trading in Satyam on the NYSE was suspended until further notice.

Though Mr. Raju’s announcement shocked most of the world, there had been signs for months that something was wrong at the top of Satyam.

The company came under close scrutiny after an October report on Fox News that it had been banned from World Bank contracts when spy software was installed on some computers. Satyam denied the accusation, but in December the World Bank confirmed it had been banned for giving improper benefits to bank staff, and for not accounting for all its fees.

In December, Satyam investors revolted after the company proposed buying two firms with ties to Mr. Raju’s sons.

On Dec. 30, analysts with Forrester Research warned that corporations that relied on Satyam might ultimately need to stop doing business with the company.

“Firms should take the initial steps of reviewing the exit clauses in their current Satyam contracts,” in case management or direction of the company changes, Forrester said.

Four of the company’s directors resigned recently and the company hired Merrill Lynch for strategic advice, a move that is generally a precursor to a sale.

On Wednesday, Merrill Lynch sent a letter to India’s stock exchanges, saying it had terminated its relationship with Satyam after the bank “came to understand that there were material accounting irregularities” at the company. Merrill Lynch officials declined to comment further.

Mr. Raju wrote in his confessional letter that neither he nor the managing director (his brother B. Rama Raju) had “taken one rupee/dollar from the company.” He said the board, his brother and their families had no knowledge of the situation, seeming to leave open the possibility that someone else did.

SEBI, India’s securities regulator, said it would investigate trading in Satyam’s shares. Mr. Raju could face up to 10 years in jail and fines of $5 million in India for the accounting fraud.

Satnav device gets the shopping done fast

If the prospect of Christmas shopping in crowded malls fills you with dread, help could soon be at hand. Researchers have developed a hand-held device that maps out the fastest route for you to get all your shopping done - and tells you where to find the best bargains.

The device, developed by Javier Bajo at the University of Salamanca in Spain, has been tested in the Tormes shopping mall in Salamanca, where it received a thumbs up from shoppers and store owners alike (Applied Soft Computing, DOI: 10.1016/j.asoc.2008.11.009). "Most shop managers believe that the device has helped their businesses attract more customers and sell more," says Bajo.

The Tormes mall houses more than 80 different stores, and the device has been used by more than 2400 people.

Shoppers key in information about their preferences, the amount of money they have to spend and the amount of time they have available. The device then uses radio frequency identification (RFID) to pinpoint their location, and beams information to them about shops and offers via Wi-Fi.

Even if shoppers are not looking to buy anything specific and just want to spend the afternoon at the mall, the system can help with suggestions such as films on at the cinema or coffee shops, says Bajo. "You can ask the system for suggestions based on your specific interests, and it will suggest a route for you, including different activities."

Bajo is developing a similar system that will help nurses to monitor elderly patients, and suggest which needs attending to first.

Oracle Earnings Preview: 'Good' News Might be Too Good

Oracle Earnings

So many times when companies report their quarterly earnings, the focus is not on the quarter past, but the quarter upcoming and if a company can raise its guidance, so much the better.

Unless you're talking about Oracle Corp [ORCL 16.87 0.13 (+0.78%) ] .

The company is set to report its fiscal second quarter earnings after the bell later today, and while there's a fair amount of interest in those numbers, analysts will be keeping a careful eye on the company's comments for its current quarter, especially with Oracle's bellwether status for enterprise customers.

The Street anticipates 34 cents on $5.86 billion, even though Oracle itself had projected 35 cents or 36 cents a share in profits. And that speaks to the issue of too much optimism. The Street, on average, already doesn't believe Oracle's own guidance and the analysts I'm talking to are skeptical that if the company raises guidance, it might not necessarily be taken as the "good news" it normally would. Incidentally, the range on the Street right now is 31 to 36 cents.

Brendan Barnicle at Pacific Crest Securities is looking for an inline quarter, along with $1.65 billion in licensing revenue, the other key metric by which Oracle is measured.

"The key thing is guidance," Barnicle tells me. "The biggest risk is that Oracle is too optimistic with the guidance." He's looking for 34 cents on $5.86 billion, and licensing fees dipping to about $1.58 billion.

As far as the second quarter is concerned, Oracle is deeply affected by currencies, and the strengthening dollar surely didn't help the company's bottomline. FBR analyst David Hilal says the dollar's 12 percent jump against the euro since September could cut revenue by as much as $300 million in its second quarter. But if the company cites the weakened dollar lately as a reason to raise guidance, that could give the company's outlook a bit more credence.

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I'm told that Oracle has also been engaged in some pretty heavy-duty cost-cutting, without having to institute a broad layoff. Oppenheimer's Brad Reback wrote to his clients that Oracle could shave as much as $700 million in expenses without laying off any workers. Still, with 85,000 employees, if Oracle does announce a workforce reduction, the analysts I'm talking to say it wouldn't be much of a surprise. More likely are cuts in travel budgets and a hiring freeze. Either way, cost-cutting certainly could help bolster the company's second quarter performance as well as guidance.

Bottomline is this: Experts anticipate a serious slowdown in PC, network hardware and enterprise software spending in 2009. That's not a surprise. Goldman Sachs says financial companies, a big Oracle customer base, could reduce budgets on average 20 percent next year. The strengthening dollar won't help Oracle either. But the company could still be better-positioned than rivals IBM [IBM 85.26 -0.58 (-0.68%) ] or SAP simply because of its licensing structure and diverse software offerings.

The company's in the midst of an additional $8 billion stock buyback program, which might come at a good time, considering shares are below their 50-day and 200-day moving averages of $16.87 and $19.71. Shares are down about 20 percent so far this year.

Some analysts I'm talking to believe that Oracle has been oversold, but is unlikely to see any meaningful break-out until the economy starts turning around. However, they also believe that Oracle will be among the first to benefit from an improving economy and is getting increasingly attractive, on a valuation basis at these levels. This should be an interesting conference call indeed.

Hyper-Local News Service Outside.In Grows

As newspapers lose readers and advertisers, local news seems to be dying a long, slow death. The debate over what to do about it took on new urgency last week, when the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection.

Some Web entrepreneurs are starting companies to try to resuscitate local news. One of those start-ups, Outside.In, announced its latest round of funding Monday.

The Brooklyn-based start-up raised about $2 million to add to the $5.5 million it has already raised, primarily from existing investors Union Square Ventures, the New York City Investment Fund and Betaworks. Angel investors who have backed Outside.In include big Silicon Valley names such as Marc Andreessen and Esther Dyson.

Outside.In labels information from across the Web with geographical tags, categorizing it by city, neighborhood, intersection or street address. The site can then provide readers with “hyper-local” news from news outlets, blogs and even Twitter. It helps small publishers find an audience and helps big publishers find local stories. By serving up all this local content, it hopes to help advertisers target the reader on precise streets.

Outside.In can tell advertisers where a reader is and affirm that they are reading about their neighborhood. That means an ad for a bookstore that is 50 feet from the reader will be more useful for the advertiser and the reader.

“Our whole premise is that these traditional media companies need to evolve to something that’s more sustainable,” said Mark Josephson, Outside.In’s chief executive officer. “They’re getting squeezed at the top by the national news organizations, and their customers are expecting really granular, specific, local information, but you can’t put a reporter on every corner.”

The site went live in 2007 as a service that aggregated local citizen bloggers who cover topics that a town’s citizens are passionate about but that the newspaper might not have the resources to report on, such as a city library brouhaha, the high school football team or the closing of a favorite coffee shop.

Mr. Josephson, formerly an executive at the ad network service Seevast and at About.com (which is owned by The New York Times Co.), became chief executive in May. He replaced the company’s founder, Steven Johnson, who became executive chairman.

Since then, the company has unveiled new services. One of them, Radar, lets readers subscribe to news feeds about their choice of neighborhoods or cities. StoryMaps lets publishers chart their stories on a map. Outside.In has 2 million unique visitors each month and has grown from 400,000 in January. An Outside.In iPhone application will be available within a month.

Perhaps most interesting is what Outside.In can do for its big publisher partners, including NBC and McClatchy newspapers, who want to be one-stop shops for local news. Outside.In maps stories from around the Web and brings local stories to a publisher’s site.

On NBC Chicago’s Web site, for example, readers can search for stories about the Hyde Park neighborhood, and see results from NBC Chicago as well as the Huffington Post, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicagoist blog.

For smaller publishers, Outside.In offers a map that plots stories by location, giving readers a new way to search. On Mommy Poppins, for example, a blog about what do with kids in New York City, readers can see everything written about Park Slope in the last two weeks.

Outside.In charges publishers to use its service, but mostly depends on advertising for revenue, which is a challenging business model right now. Mr. Josephson believes that Outside.In’s local focus will help it survive the slowdown in online advertising.

“What local media companies have going for them is sales teams with longstanding relationships in these local markets,” he said. “If they only had more to sell, they could sell it.” Other sites target readers by ZIP code, but they do not know if that reader is interested in neighborhood news or reading a foreign affairs story, Mr. Josephson said.

Hand-wringing about the plight of local news has been escalating. We’ve done a lot of it here at The New York Times: Saul Hansell argued in the Bits blog that local advertisers might no longer need local newspapers to spread their message. Richard Perez-Pena wrote about non-profits that cover local news, and Maureen Dowd wrote about local newspapers outsourcing reporting to India. David Carr argued that the political scandal in Illinois proves how important it is that newspapers survive.

What do you think? How can Web sites like Outside.In help keep local news covered? Have you spotted Web sites with promising business models?