Archive for October, 2007

Microsoft buys 1.6% of FaceBook for $240m

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/10/2007
in Microsoft, google and social networks
. 5 Comments

The New York Times is reporting this morning that Microsoft has bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240m, this values the company at $15bn.

This values Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 23 year old founder at $3bn and Accel Partners, the venture capital firm that invested $12.7 million in May 2005 now owns 11 percent of Facebook stock worth a cool $1.65 billion.

The deal must be a huge relief for Microsoft after the stories circulating yesterday that Google were about to beat them to the post (pun intended!) in buying a piece of Facebook.

This is a dream deal for Facebook as they yield only 1.6% of the company and still manage to scoop $240m.

What is in it for Microsoft? Well, on the one hand, as the New York Times reports:

As part of the deal, Microsoft will sell the banner ads appearing on Facebook outside of the United States, splitting the revenue with it. Last year, Microsoft struck a deal with Facebook to run banner ads on the site in the United States through 2011.

but, probably equally importantly, Microsoft has stymied Google’s plans to own advertising rights on Facebook.

Is Facebook really worth $15bn? Who knows. A company is worth as much as a buyer is willing to pay for it. Today, for whatever reason it is worth $15bn to Microsoft. Who knows what it will be worth next week.

Google Translate writes its own translation engine

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/10/2007
in google
. 5 Comments

I noticed on the Google Operating System blog yesterday that Google Translate had switched translation engines from Systrans widely used engine to an in-house statistical based translation engine.

Intrigued, I headed over to Antonio Ortiz’ blog (Antonio is based in Malaga and blogs in Spanish), copied some of the text from one of his posts and ran it through both engines.

This is the original Spanish:

Microsoft comprará 20 compañías al año durante los próximos cinco. Es lo que ha afirmado Steve Ballmer en la conferencia Web 2.0 de San Francisco, que también ha señalado que también incluirán fabricantes de software open source en la lista y que prefieren compañías pequeñas (pequeñas entre 50 millones y 1000 millones de dólares) antes de que se conviertan en inaccesibles (News.com).

Here is the Systrans translation:

Microsoft will buy 20 companies to the year during next the five. It is what it has affirmed to Steve Ballmer in the conference Web 2,0 of San Francisco, that also has indicated that also they will include software manufacturers open source in the list and who they prefer small companies (small between 50 million and 1000 million dollars) before they become inaccessible (News.com).

and now here is Google’s translation:

Microsoft will buy 20 companies a year for the next five. This is what has Steve Ballmer said at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, which has also indicated that manufacturers will also include open source software on the list and who prefer smaller companies (small between 50 million and one billion dollars) before they become inaccessible (News.com).

While they are both far from perfect, I think you will agree the Google translation is at least as good as the Systrans one. Not bad for a new translation engine.

The Google Translation service has the option to “Suggest a better translation” - this is then fed back into the translation engine and it learns apparently!

What will they think of next!

Any questions for David Berlind?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/10/2007
in Interviews, PodLeaders, Podcast and mashup
. 4 Comments

David Berlind is the executive editor at ZDNet. David is also one of the founders of Mashup Camp.

What is Mashup Camp? According to the About page Mashup Camp is:

an unconference-style event that’s dedicated to bringing together the Internet software mashup community for a face-to-face collaborative meetup where new relationships are formed, old relationships are nurtured, ideas are shared, mutiple balls are moved forward, and innovation happens in real-time.

David is involved in the organisation of Europe’s first Mashup Camp which will be held in Ireland on 10th-12th of November (07).

I will be interviewing David for a podcast tomorrow morning (Oct 25th - apologies for the late notification). If you have any questions you’d like me to put to David, feel free to leave thm in the comments.

Gmail adds IMAP support

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/10/2007
in Email and Microsoft
. 4 Comments

I noticed that Chris Gilmer reported this morning that Gmail is now supporting IMAP for getting your mail as well as POP.

I quickly logged into my GMail account and Lo!, there was the IMAP option - wohoo!

Gmail adds IMAP

Why is this a good thing? Well, previously if you wanted to read your Gmail in your email client application (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) you had to use the POP protocol. IMAP is a better protocol for doing that because as Alex Chitu pointed out:

you’re always connected to the server, more clients can connect to the same account, you can obtain the text from a message without the attachments and the state information is synchronized (you can add labels from the client, read or delete a message and Gmail will synchronize).

Of course Hotmail (or as it is now mis-nomered Windows Live Mail) still doesn’t even allow POP access (unless you pay for it), never mind IMAP. This leads to many people’s accounts being deleted and losing all their email (happened to me last year).

Hotmail used to be a ground-breaking product until Microsoft got their hands on it and slowly squeezed the life out of it.

Microsoft needs a new strategy for its Windows platform

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/10/2007
in Mac, Microsoft, Vista, Windows and apple
. 12 Comments

I have Vista installed on this laptop. I haven’t booted up Vista in weeks. Why? Because I installed Ubuntu on another partition and it is so much faster, and more secure (since Microsoft instructed me to remove Norton and then failed to get OneCare to work on this laptop).

Many others are eschewing Vista, not just because of the speed and stability issues it has but also because of the steep learning curve on moving from XP to Vista.

On the other hand Apple’s star seems to be in the ascendancy. In their financial statement released yesterday, for the quarter ended September 29th, they report:

Apple shipped 2,164,000 Macintosh® computers, representing 34 percent growth over the year-ago quarter and exceeding the previous quarterly record for Mac® shipments by 400,000. The Company sold 10,200,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 17 percent growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone™ sales were 1,119,000, bringing cumulative fiscal 2007 sales to 1,389,000.

“We are very pleased to have generated over $24 billion in revenue and $3.5 billion in net income in fiscal 2007,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re looking forward to a strong December quarter as we enter the holiday season with Apple’s best products ever.”

“Apple ended the fiscal year with $15.4 billion in cash and no debt,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.

Why are Apple’s Mac sales doing so well and Vista so poorly?

At least part of the answer has to be in Apple’s strategy of releasing new versions every 12-18 months. Steve Jobs referred to this strategy in a piece in the New York Times yesterday when he said:

“I’m quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We’ve put out major releases on the average of one a year, and it’s given us the ability to polish and polish and improve and improve.”

Apple introduced OS X in 2001 and since then has brought out four newer versions (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger) with a fifth version (Leopard - OS X 10.5) due to ship this coming Friday.

Ubuntu releases new versions on a pre-defined six monthly schedule.

Xp was also released in 2001 but the next version of Windows, Vista, didn’t ship until January 2007.

The gently, gently upgrade strategy appears to be working for Apple and Ubuntu as their uptake soars.

Microsoft needs a new strategy for its Windows platform. Its current strategy certainly isn’t working.

Java Conference

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/10/2007
in Conference
. 2 Comments

I have just seen the line-up for IrishDev’s Java Conference and it is extremely impressive.

The conference is on in Dublin on November 7th and has speakers from Apache, Sun, Iona, JBoss, Oracle, and Microsoft amongst others.

Kudos to Fergal and the guys in IrishDev for organising what looks like will be a phenomenal day out for anyone with any interest in Java.

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