“We’re going to make sure that the JVM offers the Java applications as much access to the native functionality of the iPhone as possible,” Klein said.

After the release of the software development kit for Apple’s
iPhone, Sun Microsystems says it’s going to enable Java applications to run on the device, InfoWorld is reporting.

Java on the iPhone will mean that versions of software, like customer relationship management and other enterprise applications, could be available on the device.

(Credit: Hyperdesk)

For this reason, on Wednesday, July 30, The Skins Factory launched Hyperdesk, a software package that will spice up your Windows XP, and turn it into a world of exciting themes, skins, and wallpapers. The software even allows you to create widgets for other applications, such as iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Hyperdesk uses Microsoft’s own skinning engine to apply the Windows themes, which means these changes won’t affect the system’s performance very much. The changes are also completely reversible, and you can switch between Windows XP’s default theme and Hyperdesk themes with a single click of the mouse.

It’s been more than a year since
Windows Vista was launched and Windows XP is still going strong. In my opinion, it’s still a great operating system–though, it’s not that hard to look great when compared to Windows Vista. Once thing is undeniable, however: Windows XP is getting old, especially in its aesthetic.

Turn your Windows XP into Disney's It's a Magical World.

These themes are available now but, unfortunately, they are not free. Their prices range from $9.95 to $14.95.

Missing were details about how Charter’s system works, which we’ve tried to remedy with the following conversation that took place on Thursday with Ted Schremp, Charter’s senior vice president of product management and strategy. Schremp confirmed that Charter is using technology from Redwood City, Calif.-based NebuAd–which is reminiscent of how British broadband providers have been working with Phorm, which uses deep packet inspection with “anonymized ISP data to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time.”

The key from our perspective is that we’re very customer-oriented in everything we do. The privacy concerns and the ability of our customers to opt-out and the fact that we’re talking today is indicative of that as well. We want to be very clear that they have a choice.

We really don’t know. We can really only speak to Charter.

Charter Communications is planning to monitor its customers’ Web surfing and then, anonymously, display relevant advertisements.

Q: One point of criticism has been the way your opt-out mechanism currently works. In the future, are you going to allow a customer to opt-out their entire household, without having to set a browser cookie for each user account on each computer?

It doesn’t sort of sit on top of advertising that’s there. Most Internet advertising, as I’m sure you know, is served through ad networks (and NebuAd works with them).

Q: Though it’s still going to be a box on your network. You’re going to have to trust them to some extent to get the privacy safeguards right.

The cookie-based opt-out was arrived at on the basis of our focus groups and the nature of the Internet household at this point. The majority of households are becoming multi-PC households. The users are a variety of folks, be it spouses, kids, etc. The way we’ve done it is very consistent with Internet use in the household. The notion of a cookie-based opt-out supports a variety of choices.

The easiest example is someone shopping for a
car and visiting Honda.com, Toyota.com, Ford.com, Chevrolet.com. As our end user does that, the model becomes informed based on the notion that the end user may be shopping for a car. Let’s say they go to a Web site that utilizes an ad network that NebuAd is part of. An ad may be served based on that model.

We don’t disclose the terms of our agreements or this sort of detail.

At this point it’s very early. I think it’s consistent with the way we’ve rolled out any other product.

What the third-largest U.S. cable operator, headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., probably wasn’t planning on was a privacy-fueled Internet backlash that began a few days ago after it began notifying customers of its intentions. For its part, Charter describes its behavioral profiling plans this way: “innovative new technology in the field of online advertising enables Charter to provide you with an enhanced online experience that is more customized to your interests and activities.”

The intent of pilots and the intent of being very forthcoming with our customers is to let us fine-tune the deployment.

Absolutely. What we heard from customers is that No. 1, ensure that my privacy is being protected and give me an opt-out should I choose that path. When we picked a partner, that was (important). We’re confident that all baseline privacy regulations are accommodated in the engineering of the solution.

We view it the same way as offering faster Internet speeds. This is no different. It’s about taking the latest technology and applying it as a way to be useful to our customers.

In any relationship there’s always a level of trust. But there’s also a level of rigor and selection and testing and we’ve applied that here.

But, culturally speaking, Internet users have grown to expect broadband providers to provide mere pipes and not be involved in monitoring Web activity for advertising purposes. (There’s also a difference between making monitoring a feature of the service from the beginning and adding it after you have millions of customers. Expectations have already been set.) So how to convince customers that monitoring is useful and sufficiently privacy-protective? How to handle requests to opt-out? Keep reading to see how Charter answers those questions.

Q: What reaction have you received from your customers?

Q: Sure.

Q: Do you know how many sites are participating, how much of your customers’ attention you can capture? How big is this?

Q: If you’re getting a new stream of revenue from NebuAd, does that mean lower prices for your customers?

My understanding is that NebuAd has partnered with ad companies that represent the majority of Internet advertising. The majority of Internet advertising is syndicated.

Q: What other ISPs are doing this, as far as you know?

Q: If NebuAd gives you a box or boxes that you place on your network, these devices will have access to all of your customers’ traffic. Have you independently verified that privacy protections are in place and the boxes act the way you think they will?

We’re partnering with a third-party company called NebuAd. The system is designed to protect our customers’ privacy. Their information is never shared with NebuAd. The way the system works is that it tracks URL information, again in an anonymous way, and uses it essentially to build a model that infers the customer’s interests based on the URL visited. I can give you an example.

What you said is correct. What’s being said is incorrect. We’re not serving additional ads. We’re not replacing ads.

Q: How does your “enhanced” Web browsing experience work?

We’re sort of piloting the service in four markets. What’s generated the activity is that we’ve proactively informed customers in these markets via letters. The trial hasn’t actually started but it will shortly.

Q: Do you know what ad networks it partners with?

Q: Maybe this is a confusion over terminology. To obtain the domain name to route the packet, you need to look at only the headers through shallow packet inspection. Obtaining the URL means unpacking and understanding one more level, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Are you looking beyond the domain name to the URL, say ford.com/mustang and ford.com/focus?

It’s still pretty early. As I said before, our objective from day one has been to be very proactive and forthcoming with the information. We’ve had some levels of calls and inquiries and so on, and it’s mostly “Try to help me understand how my privacy is (protected) in the engineering of the solution.”

The disclosure led to a flurry of criticism, with Consumerist.com reprinting a letter from a Charter subscriber and speculation on DSLReports.com that existing Web advertisements would be intercepted and replaced by targeted ones. Slashdot called it “spying on” customers.

Q: If you’re conducting deep packet inspection, that means you know what data your customers are transferring. Are you going to look for evidence of copyright infringement, child pornography, and so on as well?

Q: There’s been speculation that you’re delivering additional ads through pop-ups or pop-unders or replacing existing ads. But you’re not doing that, are you? Charter customers would see a more targeted ad instead of an existing generic ad.

Q: Let’s say NebuAd has a relationship with DoubleClick, and let’s say CNN.com uses DoubleClick for advertising. If you visit car Web sites and then visit CNN.com, you’re more likely to see a car ad as a result, right?

The ads that are already being served are being served on an informed basis. We’re informing the model to an additional degree. There is a level of misinformation about how that works.

The enhanced advertising solution does not utilize deep packet inspection. It looks at URL level information only. That’s another point of misinformation on the Net.

Q: You’re saying that URL-level information is not deep packet?

Q: Do you have any plans to fine-tune it and make any changes?

Q: Can you disclose how much you expect to receive in terms of revenue?

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

As we’ve gone into these pilots, we’ve conducted a series of focus groups to help us understand from their perspective, does this technology add value to their Internet experience, talk through privacy concerns, and so on. What our customers have shared with us is that they understand the fact that advertising is part of the Internet model. To the extent that fuels the economics behind the Internet, they understand that. They appreciate the notion that ads that are being served are attuned to their interests or potential interests.

Now, there’s nothing particularly novel about free Internet services that look at what you’re doing and display relevant advertisements. Google.com and Gmail.com do just that. Nor is there anything novel about ad-supported Internet connectivity: Juno has offered this for years.

That’s a better question for NebuAd.

There are a number of categories, call them all sensitive in nature, that are clearly exempted from any (inspection) including items of a sexual nature, medical nature.

Ted Schremp, Charter's senior vice president of product management and strategy, who says there’s a lot of ‘misinformation’ about his company’s plans to monitor users’ activity so appropriate ads can be displayed.

(Credit:
Charter Communications)

Suffice it to say that we’re using URL-level information only.

Yes. If you look at the transaction flow, if CNN has a relationship with DoubleClick, we, through this anonymous model, have provided information to NebuAd.

Dell has told us that the Latitude line would also be getting a Penryn update this month, but there is still no sign of the new chips on Dell’s business laptops.

(Credit:
CNET Networks, Inc.)

Dell’s XPS M1730 laptop now lists two Penryn CPU options, the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo T9300 and the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo T8300 (which has half the cache, 3MB, of the T9000-series chips). The two Penryn chips cost less than the Core 2 Extreme X7900 and Core 2 Duo T7800 options. (Expect the T7800 option to soon be replaced by the T9500.)

Dell XPS M1730: now with Penryn.

Dell’s XPS M1330, which got Penryn last week, boasts three Penryn chips, the T8300 and the T9300 plus the 2.6GHz T9500. The T8300 sells for the same price as the T7500 chip, which is a generation behind and clocked slightly slower but serves up more L2 cache. I say you sacrifice that extra 1MB of cache and get the new chip, if deciding between the two. Better yet, spend an extra $125 for the T9300, which is faster and serves up 6MB of L2 cache. The T9300 would seem to reside in the price-performance sweet spot.

“We don’t make phones ourselves. We don’t have any plans to make phones ourselves,” the told the paper. “Our focus is on the belief that a phone is a very personal thing. Different people want different types of phones. We think that is going to continue, and we think Windows Mobile is in a great position to service all those different opportunities.”

“You have to look at how fundamentally compelling the difference is between a progressive scan DVD player and the picture that it can produce and what you get on a high-definition player. The reality is there is some difference, but most people look at it and say, ‘I am not going to pay extra for that.’”

On the topic of mobile browsing, Bach also addressed the issue of the lack of advertising success in mobile Web browsing, saying that it’s still a work in progress.

However, CrunchGear is reporting that a tipster with “close friend who works at Microsoft” said they were told that Microsoft will try to upstage Apple on Monday with the announcement that an Blu-ray Xbox 360 will be available by the Christmas holiday shopping season.

And can we expect to see the company embrace Blu-ray in the next version of its Xbox game console?

Bach also touched on entertainment issues, including Microsoft’s backing of the now-largely extinct HD DVD format, pointing out that many consumers say they can’t see a substantial picture quality improvement with next-generation discs.

“The business model for browsing on a phone has not gotten itself completely clear yet,” he said. “In the PC space, the way people monetize the Internet is through advertising. Now in the phone space, we believe that advertising will be a part of that experience, but it’s a different form factor.”

“It’s about browsing. It’s about music. It’s about video. It’s about e-mails, text messaging, and photos.”

On the eve of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where a new iPhone is rumored to be unveiled, the man who is charge of developing
Xbox, Zune, and Windows Mobile began his question-and-answer session with the paper by touting the success of Windows Mobile.

“There is nothing to even talk about right now with regard to the next generation. That is so far out that there isn’t anything to talk about.”

He went on to say that the phone itself is just one component of smartphones’ success.

“We will outsell the iPhone,” he told the newspaper.”We will outsell the BlackBerry.”

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview published Sunday that the company has no plans to put up a
Zune phone to compete with
iPhone.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Talk your thoughts into e-mails.

This seems like a very useful tool that will free your thumbs from the little keyboard. More importantly, now you can potentially talk to a business partner over the phone and then send him the transcript of the conversation in an e-mail. Maybe this will bring a whole new meaning to the term “verbal contract.” Who says talking is not writing in black and white?

(Credit:
MyCaption)

MyCaption currently works on the BlackBerry Pearl, Curve, and 8800. For a limited time, it’s available to download as a free trial.;this lets you send 10 messages for free. After that, according to the company’s Web site, you can either pay $1 for each message or pay $10/month to send unlimited messages of 15 seconds in length, or fewer. Even when you opt for the monthly plan, you still have to pay $.50 per message for messages that are longer than 15 seconds. The longest message the application can process is 3 minutes.

MyCaption claims that its new application is sophisticated enough that people can compose, forward, or reply to e-mails by speaking comfortably into the phone. You then will have the option to preview the texts before actually sending them off. The application can work with multiple e-mail accounts.

Actually, this is not exactly a breakthrough, as voice recognition technology has been out there for a long time and can be found in the Voice Command or Voice Dialing features of many smartphones. However, this seems to be the first time you can use it for more than simple sentences, such as, “Call Johnny at the office.”

The blogger’s meat is page views. Oddly enough, the best way to get page views is by giving others page views. When I link to a great post that Pamela at Groklaw has written, for example, she may notice the incoming traffic and take a look at what is driving it. If she likes what I’ve written, she may link back to it and then keep my blog in mind for future links.

A colleague has started a blog and was asking me if I had any tips to share. I don’t consider myself an “expert blogger” (I’m not even sure what that means), but my answer was easy:

It’s not. The best source of new traffic is from other blogs or online media sources. Those who are on my blog already know about me and what I write. Page views grow only when incoming traffic grows. Incoming traffic grows in tandem with outbound linking.

Funny how that works.

Is it all just self-interest? Maybe in a way. But it’s Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”-type self-interest. The kind that makes one richer by enriching others first.

You can’t horde page views. It just doesn’t work that way.

Which is why I scan Digg, Ars Technica, Linux Today, and a wide range of other sources off-and-on throughout each day. I’m looking for sites to which I can drive traffic. It’s why I welcome emails from people pitching (business) stories. It’s why I spend a significant portion of each week talking with people not directly related to my work with Alfresco or with this blog – I’m happy to help others in their businesses or careers to the extent my time allows because a) I find it interesting and b) often it translates into a help to my business at some point in the future, even if not now.

For me, that’s the first rule of blogging. Come to think of it, it describes the best way to build a business on the web or through open source.

The more you give, the more you get.

commentary

Panasonic's TC-PG10 series vies for the picture quality crown.

The Panasonic G10 series is the new king. No, it’s not as good overall as the soon-to-be-extinct Kuro Elite, but it comes closer than ever in the arena of black-level performance, and mounts a good fight in just about every other field of picture quality, with the exception of some color accuracy issues.

(Credit:
CNET)

Ever since we called the Pioneer Elite Kuro PRO-111FD the “best flat-panel HDTV ever,” we’ve been comparing the most expensive challengers on the market directly against it, looking to see if any could topple the champ. When Panasonic announced the TC-PG10 series at CES, we immediately knew it would go up against the Kuro in our lab. What we didn’t know is that Pioneer would stop producing HDTVs, leaving the hill wide open for anybody to claim the king’s throne.

Read the full review of the Panasonic TC-PG10 series

Panasonic TC-PG10 series photos

Of course, the government being the government, maybe it’ll do something supremely annoying and keep us in the dark beyond next Friday. But the calendar suggests that a decision is nigh. In June, when Google and Yahoo announced their accord, the companies voluntarily delayed implementing its terms for up to three and a half months to let the Justice Department review the deal.

So for now, we’re stuck in a he-said, she-said limbo, where the spinmeisters on both sides are slinging as much hash as possible. Despite their conflicting predictions of reality, the truth is that nobody will know whether this deal is pro- or anti-competitive until long after it goes into effect–assuming that Uncle Sam’s minions give it the green light.

If the antitrust division decides not to oppose the agreement, the big question is whether it will attach conditions. One source involved with the opponents of the partnership said there’s not much chance the trustbusters will allow the deal to be implemented without modification. Of course, nobody outside of the Justice Department really knows the answer yet–and they ain’t talking. True to form, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment.

Since the deal’s announcement, Microsoft and the advertising community have been making the case against the Yahoo-Google agreement. The Association of National Advertisers, which represents over 400 companies, last month issued a public letter maintaining the arrangement would raise prices and limit choice. Google and Yahoo obviously see things differently. Yahoo president Sue Decker then responded with a blog refutation of the argument put forth by the ANA and other critics:

This agreement gives advertisers a new opportunity to bid for placement on an additional network that includes Yahoo inventory. They will bid for what they think this opportunity is worth at prices that produce positive ROI. That’s how pricing works today in this industry and this agreement won’t change that.

To be continued.

Hewlett-Packard announced on Wednesday that it intends to buy storage specialist LeftHand Networks for $360 million.

The all-cash deal is expected to close in the first quarter of HP’s fiscal year 2009. LeftHand will be integrated into the StorageWorks division of HP’s Technology Solutions Group.

Founded in 1999, Boulder, Colo.-based LeftHand has had a particular focus on iSCSI storage area network (SAN) technology. It has 215 employees.