Tech News » 'Bossie' Awards Crown FOSS' Best of Breed

"Where is Blender?" asked Slashdot blogger hairyfeet. "It is truly an incredibly powerful piece of software. "I had a client that was unhappy because the robot he is helping design for a NASA competition at the local college just doesn't have the level of lighting realism he wanted with Solidworks. So I just sent him to this link on the Blender wiki and voila!"

Well September is shaping up to be a banner month here in the world of free and open source software.

Not only did we recently learn the winners of this year's "Bossie" (Best of Open Source Software) awards, but we have Software Freedom Day coming up this Saturday! Nothing like awards and parties to make a person forget all about hack attacks and other unsavory aspects of the daily grind.

This year, in fact, it's more important than ever to celebrate Software Freedom Day, Linux Girl humbly suggests, what with all the patent to-do we've had in recent months. Make sure you get out there and whoop it up on the 17th!

LibreOffice, Android and Chrome

Meanwhile, just as Hollywood's Academy Awards tend to dominate conversation for weeks in advance in some social spheres, so the Bossies have a similar effect in the Linux blogosphere's bars and cafes.

Chosen by InfoWorld Test Center editors and reviewers, the annual Bossies recognize "the best and most innovative open source software products for end users, businesses and IT professionals," in the press release's own words.

Among this year's winners are Drupal, Sugar, WordPress, Apache Hadoop, Git, Jenkins, Hudson and OpenStack, along with LibreOffice, Android and Chrome.

As per usual, Linux bloggers haven't been shy about expressing their own opinions.

'It's Hard to Pick a Few'

"WordPress, Sugar CRM and Lucene are great pieces of software and they are FLOSS as well," blogger Robert Pogson told Linux Girl, for example.

"Tens of millions use WordPress for their blogs as I do, and Sugar may help me find a job soon," Pogson added. "I use Lucene as one of many options for desktop/file searching -- it's smooth and reliable.

"Out of hundreds of thousands of good FLOSS projects it's hard to pick a few that stand out, but on the basis of usage, these must be near the top," he added.

"I would have recommended Apache web server and GNU/Linux, too, although those are not so much projects but ecosystems," Pogson pointed out. "I think the Linux kernel is one of the all-time great software projects of any kind."

'I Stopped Reading'

Hyperlogos blogger Martin Espinoza took issue with the way the awards were assigned.

"My only complaint about the list is that they are giving awards to the winner and the runner-up," Espinoza explained. "For example, giving a 'best of' award to Drupal and Wordpress, which both do the same thing.

"I stopped reading there, as it was clear that it was nothing but a popularity contest designed to increase page views," Espinoza said. "Now they can give awards to lots of people to make them feel good about the contest, and make people care about it for next year. Pass."

'It's Still Pretty Much a Duopoly'

Similarly, "it's interesting that both Hudson and Jenkins were included, seeing as Jenkins is a fork of Oracle's (Nasdaq: ORCL) Hudson," noted Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by "Tom" on the site.

"I would also take issue with one sentence from the press release: 'The 2011 awards ... reflect the dominance of open source software on the desktop, in mobile technology, in business applications, in application development, and in the data center and the private cloud.'

"It's still pretty much an OSX/Windows duopoly for desktop operating systems, and closed-source applications still dominate many desktop software categories," Hudson noted. "Of course, the shellacking that closed-source software is taking in the mobile OS field, the data center, and Internet infrastructure and services helps balance things out."

'All Top-Notch'

Slashdot blogger hairyfeet had a different focus.

"Did you notice that nearly every bit of software on the list except for the cloud stuff has a Windows version?" he asked. "While that makes me as a Windows user happy, it really doesn't help Linux adoption any. What Linux needs is its own Visicalc, a 'killer app' that will help spur adoption just as Visicalc helped spur the original PC sales."

Those that are on the list, however, "are all top-notch," hairyfeet agreed.

'That Is What Makes Good Software'

"The only thing I would add is, where is Blender?" he told Linux Girl. "It is truly an incredibly powerful piece of software.

"I had a client that was unhappy because the robot he is helping design for a NASA competition at the local college just doesn't have the level of lighting realism he wanted with Solidworks," hairyfeet added. "So I just sent him to this link on the Blender wiki and voila! Thanks to FOSS and a volunteer that wrote the import scripts, he is happily having his robot rendering in photo realism by Blender."

That, in fact, "is what FOSS should be about -- not about politics or factions, or all the GPL vs. BSD flamewars, but 'can this software make someone's day easier and/or better?'" hairyfeet concluded. "If it does, that is what makes good software to me."

Tech News » That Tired Old Computer Could Be a Neat Media Streamer

Converting an unused PC to a media streamer could cost you nothing per month, as opposed to a cable bill of $90 or more a month. However, some Internet programming, including Fox's, is embargoed for a few days after regular broadcast. Also, keep in mind that the interface and hook-up can be more fiddly than that supplied by a classic cable box.

One antidote to escalating household budgets is to cut utility services. However, dropping trash pickup and dumping your garbage in neighbors' receptacles in the middle of the night probably wouldn't go down too well in the community.

Likewise, terminating your electricity supply won't play too well with the family after the novelty wears off -- possibly less than an hour if there's something good on TV, or it's cold.

One cost that can be cut, though, is your media bill -- and it's possible to do it, with little sacrifice, by moving to an a la carte, Internet-delivered model.

Step 1

Identify the latest-model redundant computer you have lying around. The nature of technology evolution means this should be a relatively easy step.

Connect the PC to a TV with an HDMI cable, if you can. Otherwise, use a DVI to HDMI adapter at the PC end, or use an old VGA monitor cable and connect the PC to the TV's "VGA PC In" jack.

Connect the green 3.5mm "Audio Out" jack on the PC to the 3.5mm "PC Audio In" jack on the TV if you're using anything other than HDMI to send the video signal.

Connect the PC to your Internet router with an Ethernet cable. If the router is nowhere near the TV, use a WiFi adapter. The simplest are the kind that insert into a USB port.

Step 2

Turn the computer and TV on, and press the "Input" or "Source" button on the TV's remote control until the PC's desktop displays on the TV.

Step 3

Connect the mouse and keyboard, and clean the PC. It's likely that one reason the PC was retired was due to an accumulation of junk, including spyware, orphaned DLL files, and so on.

If you have the OEM discs that came with the computer, perform a reformat of the drive and reload the operating system and drivers.

If you don't have the OEM discs, download a free cleaning program like Advanced System Care, or similar, and run all of the deep cleaning tools like "Registry Fix" and so on. Follow any on-screen prompts to update the operating system and browser.

Step 4

Test the PC's functionality in relation to the TV. Right-click on the Desktop and choose "Properties" and then the "Settings" tab. Adjust the "Screen Resolution" settings until the desktop image displays properly. Test the audio connection.

Step 5

Download a PC-streaming application like the free Boxee, which will aggregate media-streaming services like TV-oriented Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) and music-oriented Pandora.

The Boxee PC application replicates a cable-like user experience, with a sit-back type of user interface with larger labels and text than you'd get from a regular browser. Follow the prompts to download and install the Boxee software, then choose streaming services. Many services will be free.

Or, simply use the PC's existing Web browser to browse to the individual streaming service's website. Look for TV-streaming services such as Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu and Walmart's Vudu.

Look for music streaming from Pandora. Be aware that Hulu's browser-based service is free, but the service called "Hulu Plus" that's included in the aggregators has a monthly fee.

Step 6

Weigh the pros and cons, based on cost and convenience. This solution could cost you nothing per month, as opposed to a cable bill of US$90 or more a month.

However, some Internet programming, including Fox's, is embargoed for a few days after regular broadcast. Also, keep in mind that the interface and hook-up can be more fiddly than that supplied by a classic cable box.

If you're confident this a la carte model will work for you, call your service provider to disconnect your TV service, thus slashing your monthly bill. Don't forget to retain your Internet service, though.

Want to Ask a Tech Question?

Is there a piece of tech equipment you'd like to know to operate properly? Is there a gadget that's got you confounded?

Please send your tech questions to me, and I'll try to answer as many as possible in this column.

And use the Talkback feature below to add your comments!

News » How NOT to Push a New Open Source License, Part 1

Bruce Perens wrote several times that he had to check with the lawyers to see what the various terms of his open source covenant really mean. If this license is so complicated that he doesn't understand it, shouldn't it be fixed? And why would he be publicly advocating others use a license he doesn't fully understand? This doesn't inspire confidence.

Bruce Perens recently introduced what he calls a "Covenant" open source license on behalf of Lexis-Nexis, owned by Reed Elsevier (readers may know them better as "the scientific journal paywall people"), for one of Lexis-Nexis' internal projects.

It didn't take long for readers on both slashdot and lwn to rip it apart. Of particular concern was the requirement that contributors assign their copyrights to Lexis-Nexis so that Lexis-Nexis would gain the exclusive right to commercialize the code. Contributors would only be able to use their own code under an AGPL license.

When I proposed that it would protect the authors' rights more if the author

• kept his or her copyright, or
• granted a dual license right to the company that terminates if the conditions are not respected,

Perens claimed,

"In general, companies want to be able to enforce the copyright of the entire product," and "the risk and legal load for the company are appreciably higher than what I have proposed."

The Heavy Burden of Licensing

I pointed out to him that this simply isn't true. Most commercial software companies don't own the copyrights to all the components in the products they sell. For everything from software written in Java or using Windows libraries to media players using h.264 decoders, quicktime libraries, or other code licensed from third parties, licensing -- not copyright assignment -- is the norm.

Businesses that take out a license instead of getting copyright assigned to them also have legal recourse against the licensor if any of the licensed code is found to be infringing. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has gone to court many times, and paid plenty of judgments, to protect its users and licensees. Perens' arguments are ill-informed at best.

In a follow-up, he also claimed that

"the added burden on L-N to try to manage all the licenses would probably make it easier to forgo open sourcing their codebase."

My first thought was "Wow, maybe the BSA (Business Software Alliance) should knock on their doors to see if all their Windows software is properly licensed." Instead, I pointed out that parent company Reed Elsevier is a US$9 billion dollar business that derives the bulk of its earnings from managing data, copyrights and licenses. It can certainly manage a few more license grants from contributors.

Checking With the Lawyers

Readers were also concerned that the whole "covenant" was too vague on many points, as well as being lopsided in favor of Lexis-Nexis. Perens' response to lwn reader lutchann revealed why:

"When you are working with a company as large as that (LN is a big division of huge Elsevier) with as many separate stake-holders in legal, management, etc., it's always a negotiation. That's what I could get."

Sad.

It didn't help his case that Perens was also telling two different stories about the effects of copyright assignment -- one to readers of lwn, another to slashdot. Two hours after he wrote lwn poster iabervon to say

"this isn't a problem because of a key feature of copyright law: A developer is always free to grant their own work to others under his/her own terms. The covenant doesn't make you promise not to do so,"

... he wrote on slashdot,

"I agree that licensing your contribution back to you is desirable. I'll include that in the feedback I'm sending them."

Perens is apparently a bit confused as to whether developers would need a license back. The answer is yes, because copyright doesn't work the way he pretended it does. Original developers are not free to continue to grant rights to their work after they've assigned their rights to someone else. That's the key point of a copyright assignment.

This probably explains why Perens wrote several times that he had to check with the lawyers to see what the various terms of the covenant really mean. It's becoming painfully obvious that he doesn't really understand "his own" license.

If this license is so complicated that he doesn't understand it, shouldn't it be fixed? And why would he be publicly advocating others use a license he doesn't fully understand? This doesn't inspire confidence.

Hand Over Those Assets

In reality, it is obvious that the covenant is not a meeting of the minds between equals, but a deal drafted by Lexis-Nexis to take as much and give back as little as possible. The "snatch-and-grab" was revealed in a follow-up to slashdot poster Roger W Moore, who wrote:

"I fail to understand the need to assign copyright. Surely the developer can just give HPCC a license to the code which includes the right to relicense the code under any commercial license they wish so long as they continue to support and release an open source version. Call this the HPCC Turkish Delight license and then just say that you are releasing your code under this license instead of GPL/.... By assigning copyright HPCC could use the code in a different, closed source product without compensating the developer in anyway." (emphasis added)

Perens pretty much admitted it when he replied,

"In building a balance that will motivate multiple parties to participate, you have to consider all of their needs. In the case of HPCC's needs, this allows them to continue to own their entire product, and to list their entire product as an asset." (emphasis added)

The real reason for demanding copyright assignment instead of a license is to add to its copyright portfolio so it can list those additional copyrights as business assets, and also open up the ability to license the assigned copyrights individually outside of the project.

Think of it -- how would you react if your neighbor asked for your blender for a party?

Neighbor: I'm having a party. I need your blender.
You: Sure, you can borrow it.
Neighbor: No, you don't understand -- I want you to give it to me permanently.
You: Why would I do that?
Neighbor: Because I'm having a big party and I'm going to make lots of $$$.
You: So just borrow it. You don't need to keep it forever.
Neighbor: But if I don't own it outright, it will prevent me from having lots of parties and making lots of money!
You: ???
Neighbor: Don't worry -- I'll let you borrow it back...
You: Gee, you're so generous.
Neighbor: -- but only for your own personal use. You can't use it with guests or to throw parties or make money with it.
You: Enough! You're giving me a headache. Just. Go. Away.

Open Source Magic

Does Perens really believe this is a great deal? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, so I made him the same offer that his "covenant" provides:

"assign ME your copyrights and I'll give you a grant-back to use all the copyrights in the pool under the AGPLv3. I'll go one further than Loopy-Noopy -- I'll even give you a grant-back to use them under a separate GPLv2 or later license, so you can contribute to projects like Linux, which is GPLv2 only. What could possibly go wrong?"

He hasn't yet taken me up on my oh-so-generous offer. I guess when the shoe is on the other foot, it doesn't fit so well...

There are still some people who think that slapping "open source" on something will magically attract coders as sure as manure attracts flies. It doesn't, but freetards won't accept that. Coders that work on the sort of projects that Perens is proposing cost six figures a head. A one-sided "covenant" won't interest them, and it just inflames everyone else.

This whole "covenant" shows disrespect for both the work and the rights of authors. Add to that the way that each iteration of the GPL adds more restrictions, and maybe it's time for yet another license -- but Bruce Perens' covenant isn't it.

And now for something completely different...

Internet » Facebook Rips a Page From Google+

Facebook may be way ahead in terms of membership, but it's been lagging in usability. Its latest design tweak is the ability to organize friends into lists -- a lot like Google+'s vaunted Circles. Actually, the list feature isn't new, but Facebook is now kickstarting the process, automatically organizing friends according to a few basic criteria, and enabling separate news feeds for each list.

Facebook has been rolling out a slew of changes and new options, one of the latest being its so-called smart friend lists. This feature creates lists of a user's friends, automatically based on such criteria as work, school, family and city. Users do have some control -- they can opt out entirely. Or they can use the automatically generated lists to add friends -- without, Facebook promises, a lot of effort.

Each of the lists has its own News Feed, where the user can see photos, status updates and other posts from the people on the list. Facebook has placed the Lists section on the left side of the homepage.

Users can also share items with their specific lists, leaving out the wider audience. This is done by clicking on the dropdown audience selector in the sharing tool and selecting a list.

Other niceties: Users can continue using lists they may already have created. Also, no one is able to see list titles.

Facebook did not respond to TechNewsWorld's request to comment for this story.

Sincerest Form of Flattery

If this sounds awfully like the functionality in Google+, that's because it is. Facebook is widely acknowledged to finally have met a competitor in the social networking space in the form of Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) social networking product rolled out earlier this summer.

"Facebook's new smart lists are a shot across the bow of Google+'s Circles -- make no mistake about that," Ron Schott, a strategist at Spring Creek Group, told TechNewsWorld.

"Ever since Google has introduced Plus, it is obvious that it was a wake-up call to Facebook in the context of usability design," said Hyun-Yeul Lee, an assistant professor at Boston University.

"Certainly, Facebook's recent add-on features are copying design or user interface features from Plus that they missed out on," she told TechNewsWorld.

The Bigger Picture

However, to boil the new feature down to merely competitive fear on the part of Facebook would be too simplistic.

"What Facebook seems to be doing here is creating opportunities for average users to share more content," Schott said.

Facebook's Heavy Hand

One possible drawback to smart friends is the automatic creation of the lists. Facebook has gotten a reputation for having a tyrannical attitude toward its user base -- implementing changes with little or no notice, and rarely requesting feedback. It has been lambasted repeatedly for playing fast and loose with users' privacy.

Some of this was just clumsiness on Facebook's part, according to Schott.

"Facebook does seem to come with a 'better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission' way of doing things on almost all fronts -- and that's by design," he said. "When you're dealing with 700 million users, it's not plausible to make everyone happy, so Facebook has pushed updates that simplify the user experience for the majority of its users."

Also, there is something to the argument Facebook is making with its introduction of smart lists, Jonathan Kopp, partner and global director at Ketchum Digital.

"Facebook used to enable users to sort their friends into lists, but adoption hovered at about 5 percent or less. The simple reason is, it was a tedious chore to manually sort your contacts," he told TechNewsWorld.

Already Behind?

With Facebook inching closer to the Google+ model, it is fair to ask if newbie Google+ has already seen its day.

Not hardly, said Lee. While Facebook's strength is its massive user base, it still needs to think bigger in terms of how social connectivity will look in the near future.

"Facebook is giving an aesthetic facelift to usability," she said, "but lacks the long-term vision that Plus has."

IT Management » Windows 8 May Have Devs Reaching for Painkillers

Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system will arrive on both tablets and traditional PCs when it debuts, and when it does, developers may have a lot of work ahead of them if they want their apps to run on both kinds of systems. Different kinds of processors and different types of user interfaces may make for a complicated learning curve.

Over half a million copies of the developer preview of Windows 8 have been downloaded, according to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), giving app makers around the world a sample of the software maker's upcoming operating system.

Those developers, though, may have to go through a learning curve if they want to build Windows 8 tablet apps.

The tablet versions of Windows 8 apps will be built for the OS's Metro user interface, and the Metro version of the Internet Explorer browser will not include Flash or other plug-ins. Further, they will run on devices powered by ARM (Nasdaq: ARMHY) processors, while the desktop version of Windows 8 will run on x86 PCs.

That means developers will have to create two versions of Windows 8 apps if they want them to run across the two different platforms.

"Developers will have to choose whether their apps need to be touch-enabled, in which case they should choose Metro, or whether the app requires a mouse interface for precision tasks such as computer-aided design and pixel manipulation, in which case they should choose the desktop version of Windows 8," Al Hilwa, a program director at IDC, told TechNewsWorld.

However, the lack of Flash support in Metro will not be a problem because "Windows apps today do not use Flash; they're written in native languages on Windows," Hilwa said.

Microsoft spokesperson Annie Truong declined TechNewsWorld's request for further comment.

The Perils of Win 8 App Development

Appdevs will have to go through a learning curve in order to create mobile Win 8 apps, IDC's Hilwa said.

"Apps targeting a touch interface require special style guidelines and rules that are different from those for desktop apps," Hilwa explained.

For example, Windows 8's Metro UI does not support overlapping windows, and it doesn't have all the interfaces for supporting these, Hilwa pointed out. "This means there are different ways of doing things that will require Windows UI developers to learn new tricks," he added.

The additional learning curve weighed on the minds of Windows devs, who raised their concerns after Microsoft previewed Windows 8 at the D9 conference in June.

Their fear was that they'd have to abandon Visual Basic, .NET, Silverlight and other languages with which they'd learned to create apps in for Windows.

Further, they were concerned that they'd have to compete with Web-based developers rushing into the market.

Failure to Communicate?

The question of whether or not applications created for the x86 platform can run on ARM devices led to a row between Microsoft and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) back in May.

Renee James, head of Intel's software business, had suggested that Microsoft might create multiple versions of Windows 8, four of which would work on ARM processors and wouldn't run legacy applications.

Microsoft blasted that comment as inaccurate and misleading, and Intel said that the number four was arbitrary.

Microsoft's statements at the BUILD conference Tuesday may not have done much to clarify the matter.

Announcing Windows 8 Tuesday, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows Division, had stated that apps developed for Windows 8 would run on both x86 and ARM platforms, and demonstrated that it was easy to convert desktop apps to Metro apps.

Microsoft's subsequent press release further strengthened that impression. It stated that the Metro style user interface is equally at home on touchscreens and with a mouse and keyboard and that Windows 8 would support ARM-based and x86 devices.

Sinofsky also stated that Microsoft app devs can leverage their existing skills in C# and other development languages they already know to create Windows 8 apps.

However, he told financial analysts Wednesday that x86 apps will not run on ARM devices and that cross-compatibility for Win 8 apps will not be practical, Information Week reported.

Internet » Flash's World Gets a Little Lonelier

When Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 appears on tablet devices, the Metro version of its browser won't be doing so in the company of plug-ins -- not even Flash, one of the most popular browser plug-ins ever. While Flash will still have a home in other parts of the OS, Metro IE's shunning follows moves from companies like Apple, which has also banished Flash from its mobile platform.

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) is putting on a brave face in the wake of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) announcement Tuesday that the Metro version of Internet Explorer in Windows 8 -- the one intended for tablets -- will eschew plug-ins like Flash and instead use HTML 5.

"We are excited about the innovation and opportunities that are available to our customers and Adobe as the Web and platforms evolve across devices, including Windows 8 and Metro," Adobe's Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager for platform, told TechNewsWorld.

"We expect Windows desktop to continue to be extremely popular for years to come and that it will support Flash just fine, including rich Web-based games and premium videos that require Flash," Winokur said.

"In addition, we expect Flash-based apps will come to Metro via Adobe AIR, much the way they are on Android, iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS today," Winokur added.

However, "with mobile form factors now exceeding sales of desktops and laptops and Flash not being widely embraced within mobile, it certainly doesn't paint a rosy picture for the future of Flash," remarked Mike Ricci, vice president of mobile at Webtrends.

"I just don't see a viable scenario whereby Flash survives in the long run," Ricci told TechNewsWorld.

"Flash is trending out," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, said. "Apple doesn't like it, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) doesn't like it, and now Microsoft doesn't like it."

The problem with Flash, as Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has discovered, is that it makes too many demands on both processor power and battery power to work well on mobile devices, said Carl Howe, a research director at the Yankee Group.

"Using Flash on a mobile device is a bit like putting a snowplow on your Prius. It's good in theory, but without a more powerful platform, you spend all your time spinning your wheels," Howe told TechNewsWorld.

So what will happen to existing websites and Web apps? Will their developers have to scramble to make changes?

The Race Goes to the Swift

"Standards-based Web developers have for years been telling commercial sites using Flash that they were breaking the Internet," the Yankee Group's Howe pointed out.

"Flash violates many of the fundamental principles of today's open Web, including searchability, structuring of content, and the ability to bookmark where you are," Howe added.

In other words, the move toward Web 2.0 is at least partly to blame for Flash's troubles.

Developers, at least in the mobile area, have apparently heeded the warning signs.

"Mobile developers have largely stayed away from Flash, so they are likely feeling validated by what's happened recently," Webtrends' Ricci said.

Microsoft's move away from Flash toward HTML 5 in Windows 8 should not have surprised Windows devs either.

Back in August, Microsoft indicated it would move away from browser plug-ins and toward HTML 5, and it named Adobe Flash as one of the most common plug-ins.

The Impact on Flash Fans

Companies that adopted Flash "will have to rebuild their sites in different ways or buy Adobe tools that convert them to a more Web-friendly environment," Howe remarked.

There's "a pretty good installed base of websites out there that use Flash, and they're going to move to HTML 5," William Stofega, a program director at IDC, told TechNewsWorld. "They're not going to switch overnight, but they will switch."

Adobe has introduced tools that provide a workaround to this problem.

For example, last week, Adobe announced Flash Media Server 4.5, which lets publishers create HTTP content with Flash Media Server 4.5 and push it to iDevices.

Flash Media Server 4.5 renders the stream instead of relying on a device's processor to do this work, reducing demands on battery and processor power.

Back in July, Adobe released Adobe Edge in preview. Edge is a Web motion and interaction design tool that lets designers bring animated content to websites using HTML 5, JavaScript and CSS3.

Further, the company is working closely with Microsoft, Google, Apple and others to drive innovation in HTML 5, Adobe's Winokur said.

Keeping the Hope Alive

That cooperation is essential if Adobe is to remain a player.

"Flash is looking like a legacy technology, and unless it gets support from Google, Apple and Microsoft, it's hard to see how they'll hold the line," Enderle told TechNewsWorld.

"Adobe's premise is based on the fact that they own and control Flash, but they don't own and control HTML 5," Enderle added.

Computing » Apple Could Deliver a September Surprise With New MBPs

It was only last February that Apple rolled out its current line of MacBook Pros, but a recent report suggests it's getting ready for another refresh as soon as this month. The notebook bump would allegedly be relatively minor, adding slightly faster processors and not much else. But it could be just enough to give Apple yet another blowout holiday sales season.

Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) MacBook Pro laptop was upgraded with new Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) processors a little more than six months ago, but another refresh may be in the works that will bring revamped models to the shelves within the next two weeks.

The move is believed to be necessary to keep Apple's laptop up to date with Intel's latest Sandy Bridge quad-core processors.

Citing anonymous sources, AppleInsider reported Tuesday that the refresh will deliver marginal speed bumps to the laptop's performance. Other than that, no material changes over existing models will be ushered in with the update, according to the report.

The existing lineup of Intel processors in the MacBook Pro, which run at 2.0, 2.2 and 2.3 GHz, will be replaced with new Core i7 chips running at 2.4, 2.5 and 2.7 GHz, it stated.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment by MacNewsWorld on the rumored introduction.

Avoiding Consumer Regret

Hours after the AppleInsider report appeared, Decide.com -- a price-watching service that uses a number of data-mining and predictive technologies to make recommendations to consumers so they can make better purchasing decisions -- posted a "wait" warning for the MacBook Pro.

To arrive at a purchasing recommendation, Decide gathers news and rumors from thousands of sources across the Web and analyzes them with proprietary algorithms, explained the company's CEO Mike Fridgen.

"As those rumors for a particular product hit a critical mass, our editors will see that and change our recommendations from buys to waits," he told MacNewsWorld. "In the case of the MacBook Pro, we've just hit that point. It's gotten to a point where we believe now that a consumer would have regrets if they purchased a current version of the product."

Predictable Introductions

How much regret, however, may be debatable.

For most consumers, the difference between 2.2 and 2.4 GHz isn't going to be noticeable, asserted Carl Howe, research director for the Yankee Group in Boston. "It just makes people feel like they're not buying last year's technology," he told MacNewsWorld.

Although a jump from 2.0 to 2.4 gigahertz is significant, he conceded, "most people won't really pay very much attention to it."

"These machines are fast enough that most consumers don't tax them," he added.

Howe, who has studied Apple's introduction patterns over time, wouldn't be surprised if the company did a late-fall refresh of the line. "Apple introductions are remarkably predictable because of the sheer pacing of the market," he argued. "So, for instance, they very rarely do a Pro refresh in Q4 because they're refreshing all their consumer products just before Q4."

However, "Every now again they break the rule," he conceded, "and this sounds like it might be one of those. Although if they're going to break the rule, they usually do it as a minor update.

"Faster processor, yes," he added. "New case and design, no."

Blowout Holiday Numbers

The speed at which this latest refresh may be taking place could reflect Apple feeling market heat to push out new products faster. While six months between refreshes may seem fast in the Apple world, it isn't in the PC world, where the average refresh is three times a year, observed Stephen Baker, an analyst for the NPD Group.

"Apple hasn't had that fast a cadence, but clearly there's demand from the markeplace to turn over products faster than Apple has traditionally done," he told MacNewsWorld.

He contended that now is good time as any for a MacBook Pro refresh. "You're after back-to-school and you're ahead of the holiday season," he said.

In addition, because Apple had such outstanding fourth quarter sales last year, it will be difficult to surpass that performance this year, he continued. A refresh, even a small one, of a major product line may be just what it needs to keep pace with last year's numbers.

"They'd like to have some blowout holiday numbers this season, and upgrading and refreshing on the Mac, because it doesn't happen all that often, tends to be a great driver of volume for them," he said.

Tech News » How NOT to Push a New Open Source License, Part 2

To those who whine "I don't want Google/Microsoft/Apple/whoever to use my code!" -- why not? Really, if you think they're evil because they close off code, how are you any better by doing the same to them? (plus, whining is for kids). "But it conflicts with our anti-copyright anti-business agenda." Put down the bong, grab a bar of soap, and stop acting like a freetard. You're giving the rest of us a bad name.

How NOT to Push a New Open Source License, Part 1

Maybe it's time for yet another open source license -- but Bruce Perens' covenant isn't it. Instead, consider this:

The Respect The Programmer License (RPL) Version 0.3

This file copyright (c) [year] [your name] [your email address]

All rights reserved.

1. You may use, create verbatim copies, and/or distribute this file, but you are not required to. You shall not modify this file or any copies.

2. If the file is written in a scripting language that runs in an interpreter, you may use this file, unmodified, in your program, and distribute it with your program.

3. If the file is a source code file that is normally used to generate a compiled program, you may use this file, unmodified, as part of the source for your program. You may distribute the compiled program with or without this file.

4. This file is provided "as is" and without any express or implied warranties, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.

5. The RPL is copyright (c) 2011 Barbara Hudson. Permission is granted to use the unmodified RPL to license your software. The canonical copy of this license, the release notes, FAQ, etc., can be consulted at http://milsecure.org.

End of license

For further information, contact Barbara Hudson at barbara.hudson@milsecure.org.

Interpretation/Deployment Notes

A. The RPL addresses one problem prevalent in most licenses, including the BSD, MIT, and GPL -- it's easier to just edit the file in front of you to fix a bug or add a feature than it is to contact the author and make sure everyone benefits. The RPL should eventually result in less duplication of effort and more, not less, sharing.

B. In the case of namespace conflicts (such as java or c++), please check to see if a similar file with namespaces is available from the author. The author will probably be happy to provide one, since you may not be the only person asking.

C. In the case of line ending conflicts, please check the author's website to see if there are Apple/Mac, DOS/Windows, or Linux/*NIX versions available. The author will probably be happy to provide one, since you may not be the only person asking.

D. If you need a modified version of the file, please ask the author. She or he may already be working on a new version with the changes you want. Alternatively, the author may be willing to write a custom version for you. Licensing terms for any such custom version are entirely at the author's discretion, and are not governed by this license.

E. This is an open source license -- you are free to view the code in this file and use it, intact, in any program you wish. This is not a copyleft license -- you are not required to distribute this source file with your program. This license grants you the freedom NOT to redistribute the source if you so choose.

F. You may charge any price you wish to distribute this file, and/or any program you create using it.

Remarks on the RPL

If code is written properly, it should be easy enough to integrate source files without changes. Worst-case scenario, those who use code licensed like this may have to create a "wedge" or "shim" file to interface between their code and the licensed code -- but that's good practice because it means that when an update is issued, the shim should mean that the new source won't have to be modified.

Not being copyleft means that it's more likely your code gets used. Some people will distribute it (in the case of run-time scripts, they really don't have a choice, right? :-) and this way you get credit for your work -- maybe not from the general public, but at least from your peers, which is what counts. People also know whom to contact for fixes and enhancements, leading to less waste and duplication of effort.

To those who whine "I don't want Google/Microsoft/Apple/whoever to use my code!" -- why not? Really, if you think they're evil because they close off code, how are you any better by doing the same to them? (plus, whining is for kids).

"But it conflicts with our anti-copyright anti-business agenda." Put down the bong, grab a bar of soap, and stop acting like a freetard. You're giving the rest of us a bad name.

Not being able to modify the source -- I can hear some of you going OMG THAT IS AWFUL! Hey, this is about respecting the programmer's copyrights, same as you can't modify that last book you bought. Since you can't modify or fork the file, maybe you'll collaborate with the author for a change, hmmm? Make sure bug fixes and enhancements get upstream. Or maybe even *gasp* pay them for some custom code -- or send a gift certificate for chocolate or a bottle of booze or something.

This isn't inspired by Borland's "Just Like a Book" license for its compilers (you could order the source libraries to examine, but not modify or share), but it has similarities. It's an improvement in that you can distribute the source if you want, and you can have multiple copies. But like Borland's license, you are not free to modify the code itself. Most projects should be able to accommodate that sort of limitation.

Security » FTC: Mobile Apps Not Exempt From Children's Privacy Regs

"App publishers that disregard COPPA, regardless of the communication methodology, do so at their own risk, and W3 makes it clear -- though it should have already been so -- that apps that interact with the World Wide Web or use Internet Protocol are without question covered," said Alan Friel, a partner with Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon.

Federal regulations designed to protect children's privacy cover the burgeoning mobile apps business as well as other online vehicles accessible through laptops or desktops. In fact, providers of mobile apps need to pay attention to the privacy impact not only of services offered specifically to children, but also those targeting the broader community that are nevertheless accessible to children.

In an enforcement case it revealed on Aug. 12, the Federal Trade Commission asserted that the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) covers mobile app offerings.

The enforcement action involved a complaint against a publisher of electronic games. The FTC alleged that W3 Innovations, through its Broken Thumbs Apps unit, developed and distributed mobile apps for the iPhone and iPod touch that allowed users to play games and share information online.

Several of the apps were directed to children and were listed in the Games-Kids section of Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) App Store. There were more than 50,000 downloads of those apps, the FTC said. They allowed children to play classic games, such as "Cootie Catcher" and "Truth or Dare," and to create virtual models and design outfits.

In the W3 Innovations case, the apps developed by the company encouraged children to email their comments and submit blogs to a company-generated site via email, such as "shout-outs" to friends and requests for advice.

The publisher collected and maintained more than 30,000 email addresses, the FTC alleged.

In addition, the defendants allowed children to publicly post comments, including personal information, on message boards, according to the agency.

Impact Goes Beyond Kids' Apps

Because the company's interactive apps send and receive information via the Internet, they are online services covered by COPPA, the FTC said.

"The FTC's COPPA rule requires parental notice and consent before collecting children's personal information online, whether through a website or a mobile app," said agency chairman Jon Leibowitz.

The rule also requires that website operators post a privacy policy that is clear, understandable and complete, but the company did not provide notice of its information collection practices and did not obtain the required parental consent, the FTC charged.

"Companies must give parents the opportunity to make smart choices when it comes to their children's sharing of information on smartphones," said Leibowitz.

"W3 is the first FTC case directly applying COPPA to mobile apps," Alan Friel, a partner with Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon, told TechNewsWorld.

There is still a question about the scope of COPPA in terms of private mobile app networks versus public networks, although private channels are relatively small in terms of use by the general public, including children, Friel observed.

"That said, app publishers that disregard COPPA, regardless of the communication methodology, do so at their own risk, and W3 makes it clear -- though it should have already been so -- that apps that interact with the World Wide Web or use Internet Protocol are without question covered," Friel said.

"The W3 case was focused on information about children and is generally applicable to all mobile app providers insofar as they collect information about children," Mark MacCarthy, vice president of public policy at the Software and Information Industry Association, told TechNewsWorld.

"W3 is important not just for kid's app publishers," noted Friel. "Websites that target adults, not children, have ended up paying seven-figure settlements for violating COPPA where they knowingly collected personal information from children under 13 without verified parental consent."

A common mistake occurs when age is collected at registration but those indicating they are under 13 are still allowed to register.

"All app publishers, particularly those that allow users to create profiles, need to take heed of W3," said Friel.

Congress Aware of Issue

The W3 case caught the attention of key lawmakers.

"Mobile apps can be great tools for kids to learn and have fun, but parents should never have to worry that their child's personal information is being collected or violated," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

"As the House author of COPPA," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., "I am pleased that the FTC pursued and brought charges against a mobile applications developer that was collecting and disclosing personal information about children under 13 in apparent violation of COPPA. Since COPPA was signed into law in 1998, children increasingly connect to the Internet on the go, using an array of mobile apps and new services that did not exist when the law was enacted."

While the FTC's action was based on existing law, Markey and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, jointly introduced legislation last May that would provide a specific statutory basis for including mobile apps under COPPA. The bill would amend COPPA to include the term "mobile applications" within the definition of "operator."

The bill, titled the "Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011," emphasizes protection associated with geo-location information but also says that within COPPA such terms as "online," "online service," "online application," "mobile application," and "directed to children" shall have the meanings given them by the FTC.

Without admitting to the allegations, W3 settled the case with the FTC, consenting to pay a US$50,000 penalty. The settlement also bars the company from future violations of the COPPA rule and requires the publisher to delete all personal information collected in violation of the FTC's rules.

W3's Broken Thumbs unit was "very surprised" by the FTC's action. Broken Thumbs "provided users with a means of interacting with one another and with our customer service department, which required the collection and retention of users' email addresses," the company explained in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by Barry Reingold, an attorney with Perkins Coie.

Broken Thumbs "did not ask for or collect information about the age of our users because there was no technical or functional need for this information," and its "sole purpose in collecting email data was to improve the user experience with our apps," it said. The company contended that no email address was ever used for marketing purposes or sold to another firm.

"As soon as the FTC informed us of its specific concerns -- and long before entry of the settlement order -- we took corrective action," the company said. "Any violations were inadvertent."

Tech News » Snoozing Technique Could Help Keep Smartphone Batteries Fresh

Smartphones have notoriously short battery life, but a new approach to power management could help address that problem -- at least, while they're being used on WiFi networks. The ingenious technique could also keep tablets, laptops and other mobile devices running longer without a charge. "It's a clever little discovery," said Carl Howe, a director of research at the Yankee Group.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with a way to extend the battery life of tablets, smartphones and other devices that use WiFi.

Kang Shin, a professor of computer science and engineering, and Xinyu Zhang, a doctoral student, have developed E-MiLi, a power management method that could cut energy consumption by about 44 percent for up to 92 percent of users in WiFi zones.

E-MiLi, or Energy-Minimizing Idle Listening, involves slowing down the rate at which the WiFi receiver retrieves packets, along with filtering out unnecessary packets.

That filtering is done by creating special headers that include the destination address of each packet, and then applying an algorithm developed by Shin and Zhang that detects packets addressed specifically to a particular receiver and wakes up the receiver only then.

"It's a clever little discovery," Carl Howe, a director of research at the Yankee Group, told TechNewsWorld.

E-MiLi works for "all WiFi-equipped mobile devices, including mobile phones, tablets and laptops, and can also be used by WiFi networks such as ZigBee," said Zhang.

"It significantly improves the energy efficiency of WiFi devices," he told TechNewsWorld. "For example, it extends battery life by 54 percent for smartphones."

The E-MiLi Art of Selective Snoozing

Since it's not possible to predict when packets will arrive at a WiFi receiver, Shin and Zhang decided to reduce the clock rate of the receiver during its IL period and have it wake up and respond to incoming packets as they arrive.

However, receiving packets at a lower clock rate is a problem, because the Nyquist rate requires that the receiver's sampling clock rate must be at least twice the bandwidth of the transmitted signal.

So, E-MiLi uses a new approach called "Sampling Rate Invariant Detection," or SRID.

This adds a special preamble or header to each packet of data and incorporates a linear-time algorithm that can accurately detect the preamble even if the receiver's clock rate is much lower than that of the transmitter.

SRID embeds the destination address into the preamble so that a receiver will only respond to packets destined for it.

On detecting the preamble, the WiFi receiver rockets into full clock rate and recovers the data packet.

"Everybody forgets WiFi is based on Ethernet, and there never was any attention paid to this preamble and power-saving stuff because it was designed for a world of desktop and server computers," the Yankee Group's Howe pointed out.

"When they made it wireless, they probably should have spent more time on this," he added.

Why We Need E-MiLi or Something Similar

WiFi's power-saving mode doesn't help much, because it can't reduce the idle listening (IL) time associated with carrier sensing and configuration, Shin and Zhang found.

IL consumes as much energy as active transmission and reception, and WiFi clients spend lots of time in IL because of technical issues such as media access control (MAC)-level contention and network-level delays, noted Shin and Zhang.

Even with PSM enabled, IL accounts for more than 80 percent of energy consumption for clients in a busy network and 60 percent in a relatively idle network.

WiFi receivers must constantly be in IL mode because packets arrive unpredictably, and also because WiFi receivers must find a clear receiving channel.

That's true for all wireless radio receivers -- for example, Bluetooth hops among 79 channels in order to minimize receiving errors, according to a dissertation by Texas A&M University student Ahmed Ahmed Emira. Each Bluetooth packet has to arrive within a 625-microsecond slot.

Where E-MiLi Might Go

E-MiLi lets SRID be integrated into existing MAC or sleep-scheduling protocols by adding a downclocked IL mode into the receiver's state machine through Opportunistic Downclocking (ODoc).

ODoc takes a smart approach to downclocking, assessing the potential benefit of doing so before letting the receiver downclock.

Shin and Zhang's tests show that E-MiLi can detect packets with close to 100 percent accuracy even if the receiver operates at one-sixteenth the normal clock rate.

E-MiLi reduces energy consumption consistently across different traffic patterns without any noticeable performance degradation, Shin and Zhang found.

Device manufacturers will likely show the most interest in E-MiLi, said Zhang, because it runs in the hardware, firmware and device drivers of WiFi cards.

Security » FTC: Mobile Apps Privacy Protection Not Just for Kids

The legal basis for FTC action on privacy leans heavily on the agency's mandate to regulate deceptive practices. "FTC actions to date with regard to adult consumer data privacy and security have dealt with companies that do not follow their own policies, or have misleading policies or no notice of their policies at all," said Alan Friel, a partner with Wildman Harrold. Such deficiencies are considered deceptive practices.

Providers of apps for mobile devices are just as responsible as other electronic commerce vendors in terms of protecting the privacy of customers. In a recent enforcement action, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) signaled that mobile apps fall within the agency's jurisdiction, and that it will not hesitate to investigate potential privacy violations associated with mobile apps.

The enforcement action involved a complaint against a publisher of electronic games, and it marked the first time the FTC initiated a privacy case involving apps for mobile devices.

W3 Innovations, through its Broken Thumbs Apps unit, developed and distributed mobile apps for the iPhone and iPod touch that allowed users to play games and share information online. Several of the apps were directed to children and were listed in the Games-Kids section of Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) App Store. There were more than 50,000 downloads of those apps, according to the FTC.

While the W3 Innovations case was largely based on provisions related to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a key element in the case was FTC's determination that mobile apps are subject to its jurisdiction regarding privacy protection for all users, regardless of age.

Not Just for Kids

"The case represents the FTC's first enforcement action against a mobile app developer, and it seems to send a clear message that mobile app developers should follow the same rules as more traditional websites when it comes to consumer privacy issues and privacy policies, especially when marketing to children," states Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon in an analysis of the case posted online.

"There is no doubt that the evolution of consumer data privacy we are currently experiencing includes mobile," Alan Friel, a partner with Wildman Harrold, told TechNewsWorld.

The FTC has more than just hinted that mobile apps of all types are on its regulatory radar screen. The W3 Innovations case arose "because we have been paying attention to that area," Claudia Farrell, a spokesperson for the agency, told TechNewsWorld. Additional mobile app inquiries are in the pipeline at the FTC.

"Although the FTC does not enforce any special laws applicable to mobile marketing, the FTC's core consumer protection law -- Section 5 of the FTC Act -- prohibits unfair or deceptive practices in the mobile arena," David Vladeck, director of FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said at a Senate hearing last May.

The FTC "is making a concerted effort to ensure that it has the necessary technical expertise, understanding of the marketplace, and tools needed to monitor, investigate, and prosecute deceptive and unfair practices in the mobile arena," Vladeck added.

The legal basis for FTC action on privacy leans heavily on the agency's mandate to regulate deceptive practices -- rather than a standard that relates to invasion of privacy per se.

"FTC actions to date with regard to adult consumer data privacy and security have dealt with companies that do not follow their own policies, or have misleading policies or no notice of their policies at all," Friel said. Such deficiencies are considered deceptive practices.

Industry Active on Mobile Front

The issue of mobile apps privacy has suddenly become significant for online businesses. In early September, for example, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) joined the Future of Privacy Forum's Application Privacy Working Group and became a sponsor of FPF's Application Privacy project.

SIIA's participation with FPF is aimed at helping to develop voluntary privacy principles and best practices for mobile software applications. The goal is to lessen the likelihood of burdensome government regulation.

"Mobile app developers have a responsibility to create and disclose their privacy policies when they collect and use personal information. We are joining this effort out of the conviction that the industry does not need government regulation to move us in the direction of providing a trusted environment for our users," said Mark MacCarthy, vice president of public policy at SIIA.

While the W3 Innovations case highlighted the mobile apps privacy issue, SIIA's involvement with the FPF project was not solely based on the FTC's action.

"The W3 case was focused on information about children and is generally applicable to all mobile app providers insofar as they collect information about children. The need for good privacy practices is broader than that, and it was this broader concern for good data protection practices that motivated SIIA to affiliate with the Future of Privacy Forum," MacCarthy told TechNewsWorld.

"Continued growth and innovation in the vibrant mobile marketplace is dependent on consumer confidence in the privacy protections provided by mobile application providers. While many mobile application developers are transparent about their collection, use, and protection of consumer data, recent reports have indicated that this is not always the case," MacCarthy said.

Mobile apps providers will need to keep a sharp eye on how privacy eventually is regulated.

Self-Regulation Questioned

"FTC leadership has been fairly vocal in expressing its dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of current self-regulatory efforts. Congress too has grown inpatient, and a half dozen bills are under consideration that may result in greater regulatory authority for the FTC and requirements for greater transparency, choice, and security for consumers regarding their data, particularly regarding behavioral advertising, which tracks and targets consumer behavior and mobile," Friel said.

The class action bar has brought more than 50 lawsuits this year dealing with online and mobile tracking or targeting, he noted. "The issue is not going away soon."

In the W3 Innovations case, the apps developed by the company encouraged children to email their comments -- such as "shout-outs" to friends and requests for advice -- to a company-generated site. The FTC alleged that the publisher collected and maintained more than 30,000 email addresses in violation of federal regulations, including parental notice.

In addition, the FTC alleged that the defendants allowed children to publicly post comments, including personal information, on message boards.

Without admitting to the allegations, the company settled the case with the FTC on August 12. The firm consented to pay a US$50,000 penalty. The settlement also bars the company from future violations of the COPPA rule and requires the publisher to delete all personal information collected in violation of the FTC's rules.

W3 "did not ask for or collect information about the age of our users because there was no technical or functional need for this information," the company said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by Barry Reingold, an attorney with Perkins Coie.

W3 Innovations maintained that "any violations were inadvertent."

Tech News » Can Yahoo Escape the Valley of the Dulls?

Carol Bartz has been fired from her role as CEO of Yahoo, but the company itself remains face-to-face with an identity crisis. Its collection of Web properties is large and in some cases well-loved, but the pieces rarely fit together as well as those of rivals like Google. Meanwhile, AT&T mulls its options, Groupon thinks long and hard about its IPO, and a judge adds a new chapter to the Oracle-SAP feud.

When the end of her stint as Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) CEO came for Carol Bartz, it arrived via a phone call from the company's chairman. That's what she told employees in a profanity-free, company-wide email when she learned the news.

Bartz was fired after nearly three years as Yahoo's chief executive, having failed to turn around the once-great Internet company, which has been declining for years while rivals like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) have been on a decade-long tear.

Following a string of ineffective leaders and a nasty fight with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) that almost resulted in a hostile takeover, Yahoo signed on Bartz to revive the company's revenue stream. Months after taking office back in January of 2009, she landed a search engine deal with Microsoft. It was a much smaller deal than the wholesale buyout Microsoft had been gunning for the previous year, and even though it promised long-term benefits for Yahoo, it initially made shareholders gag.

Since then, the company's had an AOL-like identity crisis. Yahoo's still a giant email provider, it owns some popular sites like Flickr, and it's still a contender in search market share, even though Bing seems to be edging it out lately. But over the past few years, Yahoo has looked sluggish and unwilling to take risks. Its deals and maneuvers just don't seem to make much noise at all, whereas competitors like Google have been busy building new online services -- and even entire operating systems in major growth areas like smartphones.

Google's lately proven it's very comfortable slaughtering its own innovations, but at least it's making them in the first place.

Listen to the podcast (11:38 minutes).

That's not to say Bartz's inability to restore Yahoo's youthful vigor in less than three years necessarily makes her a particularly bad CEO. Even the company's cofounder, Jerry Yang, who served as CEO immediately before Bartz, couldn't get much going in his time behind the wheel. Same with the guy before that, Terry Semel. Bartz didn't blow an easy job; she was just the most recent in a chain of CEOs who couldn't get the company's broad mishmash of properties and services to align into something exciting and innovative.

Now, Yahoo's board is reportedly looking into all options -- buy, sell, partner or even a combination of all three. Maybe lop off the search arm and sell it to Microsoft completely? Or maybe it can do something with that 40 percent of Alibaba it owns.

Yahoo CFO Tim Morse will take the wheel as interim CEO, but whoever Yahoo hires as a full-time replacement might need to be a little crazy. This person may need to make some kind of extraordinary cut, or a huge acquisition. There could be a lot of lost jobs, spent money and huge fights with the board and shareholders before anything remarkable happens with Yahoo.

And "remarkable" doesn't necessary mean "good," either. Whoever's next in line could stand out only for guiding Yahoo into a failure the likes of which we've never seen before. Or not. Maybe there's a rare visionary out there whose gamble will pay off. But the alternative -- to just keep walking and breathing and blinking while the rest of the Internet world speeds on by and crashes and burns and sometimes takes off into sky -- that sounds like it could be the strategy most likely make Yahoo fade into nothing.
One at Your Door ...

AT&T (NYSE: T) still thinks it has a shot at saving its proposed deal to buy out rival wireless carrier T-Mobile, despite the lawsuit the U.S. Department of Justice has filed to prevent the merger on antitrust grounds.

And even though that suit apparently took AT&T totally by surprise, the DoJ isn't completely hell-bent on stopping the deal cold -- maybe. At a news conference, a DoJ official remarked that the department's door is open, and that there's a possibility its concerns can be resolved. So maybe a settlement can be reached.

So what can AT&T do to keep the dream alive? Well, many of the DoJ's concerns have to do with consumer choice and pricing for wireless services. T-Mobile sometimes offers lower-priced plans than AT&T or its other big rival, Verizon, so perhaps AT&T can promise to keep the brand's price points intact for a certain amount of time.

Or it could promise to offload some T-Mobile stock.

Or get the public on its side -- figure out a way to convince consumers that a combined AT&T and T-Mobile would make for a happier, shinier world with better wireless prices and greater investment in services. It might even dust off that job-creation angle it was trying to stir up last week, though that one might be a little counterproductive. Telling the world that a merger of two gigantic companies will result in a net increase in jobs tends to nauseate anyone who's ever been laid off following a buyout.

Or AT&T could just go for the bloodbath and fight out the DoJ's lawsuit in court. That might cost a lot of time and pain, but a victory would mean the deal would go down AT&T's way, with no uncomfortable compromises. And even though DoJ has a valid case against the buyout, it's by no means an easy win.
... and Another Around the Corner

If AT&T somehow manages to solve its DoJ problem, one way or another, it's still going to have to deal with another lawsuit, this one filed by rival carrier Sprint (NYSE: S).

Sprint's lawsuit articulates most of the same arguments the company's been talking about ever since the deal was announced: higher prices, duopoly, harm to other carriers and so on.

Sprint's in a particularly uncomfortable situation right now with the possibility of this merger hanging over its head, and it seems it felt the urge to hedge its bets in case AT&T should win or settle the DoJ suit.

If the deal goes through, AT&T is the big winner, T-Mobile more or less ceases to exist, and Verizon loses its position as the biggest carrier in the U.S. but probably doesn't feel very much pain.

Sprint's the one that will feel the pinch. It's tiny compared to the top two rivals now, and it'll be even tinier if one of them swallows a competitor. Sprint's argument is that AT&T's move would be like an elephant, a rhinoceros and a chihuahua trying to share a studio apartment.
On Second Thought ...

Last Spring, when companies like LinkedIn and Pandora were pulling the trigger on their IPOs, there was a lot of talk about who was going to be next. Social game-maker Zynga is on the road to public trading already, and for a while there was some very excited talk about Twitter and eventually Facebook.

Groupon wasn't left out of the conversation either, especially since it had the sass to turn down Google's offer to buy it out for $6 billion late last year.

Sure enough, Groupon filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, but what's happened since then has reportedly caused Groupon to reconsider whether it really wants to jump into the public realm right now.

First of all, the market's been seriously shaken over the last few weeks. For a while, problems in Europe and the U.S. debt ceiling showdown sent Wall Street into an almost daily cycle of boom and bust. It's calmed down now, but nerves are still frayed, and some potential investors may feel it's not an ideal time to bring a new public company into the world.

Secondly, Groupon's own actions have caused some anxiety as well. It's reportedly struggled with the SEC over the method of accounting it used when filing its S1 statement, a document companies need to hand over to the commission when they're prepping to go public.

Then there was the matter of the memo Groupon CEO Andrew Mason wrote to his employees over some of the flack the company's taken lately. He expressed in great detail all the reasons he's very confident in Groupon's success. Officially, the memo was intended only for Groupon's employees, which doesn't violate the obligatory quiet period companies must undergo before they go public. During that time, a company's highly restricted in what it can publicly state. Mason's memo would have been a direct violation of that rule, except for the fact that it was only sent to Groupon employees. Of course, the reason everyone knows about it is because AllThingsD published it after it was leaked ... somehow.

That letter was actually written in response to some pretty biting criticism of Groupon's business model, which the company's endured for a long time, but even more so since it announced its intentions to go public. The basis for that criticism still stands, and that may be one of the biggest factors contributing to Groupon's reported IPO delay.

Specifically, Groupon's business is really easy to copy. It doesn't take a great deal of resources to launch your own online coupon company, and already competitors are coming out of the woodwork. Living Social has been around for a relatively long time, Facebook does it, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) does it, and Google whipped up something of its own just months after Groupon turned it down. Some focus entirely on one town, some are all about a specific kind of product. Groupon's more general, it has wide reach and a certain amount of brand recognition -- but without profits or a unique approach to the business, going public right now might end in disaster.
Shall We Go Another Round?

The bad blood between Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) and SAP (NYSE: SAP) just got badder, if such a thing were possible. A judge has overturned the record $1.3 billion penalty that SAP was ordered to pay Oracle last year. At the time, it was the largest amount of damages ever awarded to a plaintiff in a single copyright case.

SAP is still considered guilty of copyright infringement for its little TomorrowNow fiasco -- it's already admitted to wrongdoing in court. But Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled that there's no way Oracle suffered $1.3 billion worth of pain due to the SAP subsidiary's theft. She knocked the amount SAP must pay all the way down to the much more manageable sum of $272 million. That's still a big chunk of money, but it no doubt comes as a relief to SAP.

The Oracle and SAP family feud goes way back, and the trial that initially led to that $1.3 billion penalty was a bitter and tense ordeal. HP (NYSE: HPQ) was even pulled into the mess when Oracle insisted that HP's newly installed CEO, Leo Apotheker, should take the stand and testify about the TomorrowNow incident, considering he was once the head of SAP. But Apotheker was apparently nowhere to be found. He was in hiding, which is an odd place to be for a guy who was just named captain of one of the biggest hardware makers in the world.

Incidentally, Apotheker came to HP to replace Mark Hurd, who'd been squeezed out following a scandal involving a female contractor and bogus expense claims. Just as soon as he was out, though, Hurd found employment in the open arms of Oracle.

Despite the judge's billion-dollar reduction in SAP's penalty, Oracle doesn't have to take the judgment lying down. If it thinks it's owed more than the new $272 million figure, it can take SAP to trial again, and there's a good chance it'll go ahead and do just that. It's already established that SAP's defunct TomorrowNow division did something wrong, and it could come back with a more detailed explanation of how much it suffered.

Also, Oracle just seems to get a kick out of causing misery for SAP whenever possible.

Tech News » Scan: A Neat Way to Solve the Mysteries of QR Codes

Even if you don't know what they are, you probably see a few QR codes every time you leave home. They're those pixelated boxes that look like overgrown bar codes, and with the right reader -- typically a smartphone app -- they can take to you websites, send you messages, or just clue you in on your surroundings. There are lots of QR readers for iPhone out there, but one of the better of the bunch is called "Scan."

Scan, an app from QR Code City, is available for free at the App Store.
As you are out and about, walking around the world, if you ever bother to look up from the screen on your iPhone, you've probably seen a QR code -- a black and white square with three ringed black squares in the corners and a bunch of seemingly random white and black pixels scattered all over it. They look like pixelated bar codes almost.


QR stands for quick response, and the senseless little black picture is a code that can store a Web page URL or short text message. If you have a scanning app on your smartphone, you can point it at a QR code and instantly launch yourself into a website or view the secret message.

You can find QR codes in special marketing mailings, on posters in or flyers in stores, and you can even find them on baseball caps and t-shirts. I've been checking out QR readers lately, mostly out of curiosity than any real need or interest in getting a special deal on a dinner or some percentage off of a product that I probably don't need anyway. For me, QR codes are about potential because some day, I might run into a QR code in a situation where I do want that marketing message, the special deal, or to just figure out why guys are laughing at the goofy dude with the QR code tattooed on his forehead.

Point and Scan

If you search the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) App Store for "QR reader," you'll get a lot of results. There are plenty of apps to choose from. Personally, I like the basic, no-frills interface of Scan by QR Code City, which is free. Basically, when you launch the app, you'll see that the main screen shows a view from the camera on your iPhone, and if you have an iPhone 4, you can use a button to turn on your LCD flash to help illuminate a QR code in dim light -- quite handy if you're in a bar or restaurant at night.

To get the QR code to scan, point your camera at the code and try to line up the box within the obvious "frame" on your screen. In my experience, Scan was able to quickly read the QR code, usually well before I had the code lined up particularly well. In fact, Scan was able to read some codes even at odd compound angles.

So Many Possibilities

I mentioned that QR codes can show you textual content and lead you to websites, but they are even smarter than that. Marketers can create QR codes that get your phone ready to send a text message, email message, or allow you to import contact details for those guys who think QR codes on business cards are cool.

You can even create a location on a map, and once someone scans the QR code, they can launch into that location in Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Maps.

And by "you," I truly mean that you can use QR codes, too. There are several websites online that let you generate QR codes on the fly via simple Web browser. QRStuff.com lets you create more than a dozen kinds of QR codes -- and then have them printed out on a t-shirt or coffee mug, if you so desire. Or you can play with their online tool and use your iPhone to scan instantly created codes directly from your computer screen. It's a good way to familiarize yourself with the sorts of QR codes that you might run into.

There's another site called SmartyTags.com that lets you create QR codes, and if you pay attention, you'll realize that if you create an account, you can "track" your QR code. The create a code page notes, "A free account allows you to track when users scan your code, what kind if device they used, and even where they were when they scanned it."

What? You can track how codes are used? Interesting. Now you know why QR codes are getting such play as a new marketing mechanism for advertisers.

Of course, QR codes aren't just for advertisers. Some magazine publishers give readers quick access to special content, and sometimes the QR codes you run into people wearing are just special quotations or jokes. I would imagine that some guys use them as quirky pickup lines for geek-savvy girls while they are hanging out at local Apple Stores. (Note to self: This might not be such a bad idea, though we'll probably see it happen as a scene in some movie or TV show soon.)

What About Security?

QR codes are not inherently secure, and they can be created by hackers. Consequently, you'll want to think before you scan. Can you trust the source? Is scanning the code worth any potential risk? Is the QR code actually a sticker? If it's a paper sticker stuck on the surface of something, maybe it's not the original QR code at all, but an impostor code. This happens. Wikipedia.org has an entry about QR codes, and the bottom, it talks a bit about the security risks. Check it out.

Meanwhile, there's a feature built into Scan that you'll want to enable: In Settings, under Websites there is an "Ask Before Opening" toggle switch. Slide it to On. Next time you scan a website, Scan will show you the destination URL. If it looks fishy, you can decide not to automatically load the Web page.

Other features include the ability to create a login so you can maintain a big history or your scans. It might be handy if you go crazy and start scanning everything you see.

All-in-One Options

In addition to dedicated QR code reader apps, some apps do double-duty or have been upgraded to now include the ability to scan QR codes. I've used RedLaser, for example, to scan barcodes from product packages while I've been in retail stores. Most recently I scanned the barcode on a fan to see what it might cost online as well as to see if I could find any customer reviews on it. I learned immediately that my local price, right in front of me, was only a dollar more than my preferred online retail outlet and that reviews were generally good. Nice.

The point is two-fold: 1) Pick a QR reader and download it to your iPhone. I like Scan, but there are others. 2) Next time you run into a what might be a cool QR code, you'll have the app you need to scan it.

Tech News » Linux and the Giant Breach

"Cause for concern? Yes, but there's no reason to believe that kernel sources were compromised; such a change would be easily detected with diff," said Hyperlogos blogger Martin Espinoza. "I'd sure like someone to show me a 100 percent secure, internet-connected computer... ."

Security scares are so commonplace in the tech industry today that it's virtually impossible to keep track of them all. Security scares in the Linux world, however, are still rare enough as to cause at least a small collective gasp of consternation.

That, indeed, is just what happened recently when it was discovered that the Kernel.org site had been breached last month.

"Earlier this month, a number of servers in the kernel.org infrastructure were compromised," read the note that was later posted on Kernel.org. "We discovered this August 28th. While we currently believe that the source code repositories were unaffected, we are in the process of verifying this and taking steps to enhance security across the kernel.org infrastructure."

It's since become pretty clear that the site's source code repositories remained intact, thanks largely to Linus Torvalds' Git distributed revision control system. Nevertheless, Torvalds himself last week temporarily moved Linux development to GitHub, and Linux fans around the globe are still shaking off the slight chill that resulted from the scare.

'Not That Big a Deal'

"Seriously people, this is big," wrote Mensa Babe on one of several Slashdot threads on the topic. "I really mean totally freaking big. Thanks to the open source nature of the kernel it is trivial to add a rootkit and make a new tarball. If the attackers were worth their salt then they should do exactly that."

On the other hand, "this security breach is not that big a deal," countered bzipitidoo. "Yes, it is embarrassing for kernel.org, but the damage is not that great. Sure, we'd all like to prevent security breaches from ever happening in the first place, but I have always thought detection and recovery is more important than prevention. Kernel.org has that covered in spades."

Indeed, according to another Slashdot post, the kernel attackers apparently didn't even really "know what they had."

Whatever the case, however, discussion of the event has extended to blogs and forums around the globe; Linux Girl's Quick Quotes Quill has never been so tired.

'Not the End of Linux by Any Means'

"Cause for concern? Yes, but there's no reason to believe that kernel sources were compromised; such a change would be easily detected with diff," Hyperlogos blogger Martin Espinoza asserted, for example.

"I'd sure like someone to show me a 100 percent secure, internet-connected computer...," Espinoza added.

Similarly, "of course this is a serious concern but it's not the end of Linux by any means," agreed blogger Robert Pogson.

"I expect procedures on the servers will be tightened up to prevent/detect a recurrence," Pogson added. "Sometimes it takes a failure to provoke positive changes."

Meanwhile, "the ability of Linus to switch to GitHub running software that he wrote shows the tremendous adaptability of FLOSS," Pogson said.

'This Should Improve Confidence'

Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by "Tom" on the site, took a similar view.

"A developer's remote machine co-located on the same network was compromised, their password sniffed, and used to do some monkey business on the kernel servers," Hudson told Linux Girl. "In the end, it looks like no permanent damage was done, and that the existing people, procedures and infrastructure are robust enough to recover cleanly."

In fact, "this should improve, not reduce, confidence in the Linux development process," Hudson opined.

'All Security Is a Balancing Act'

While some are "using the occasion to go into histrionics by characterizing this as a 'surprising failure,' it's not surprising," Hudson added. "It's the nature of networks, and especially of the Internet."

The fact is that "all security is a balancing act, not an absolute," she explained. "The only way to completely avoid these sorts of things is to implement so many security measures that nothing else ever gets done.

"Or unplug the computers ... which defeats the whole purpose of using computers in the first place, unless you like owning an expensive doorstop," Hudson concluded.

'Security Is About Risk Management'

"Perfect security is impossible," agreed Chris Travers, a Slashdot blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project. "A determined attacker who is knowledgeable and capable cannot be stopped by any sorts of defenses."

Security, then, "is about risk management, not about preventing all conceivable attacks," Travers explained. "The fact that this has happened is a big deal but it is also to some extent something that will happen from time to time. The downloads need to be checked, etc., and this may be ongoing."

Ultimately, "what is important here is that there are layered defenses against the source code repos themselves being tampered with," he added. "Linux has good multilayered defenses here, and so this is not a major issue for Git-based projects.

"So, without knowing more, I don't see a reason to be concerned at present," Travers concluded.

'It All Comes Down to Time'

"There is NO SUCH THING as a perfectly secured site, period," echoed Slashdot blogger hairyfeet. "If you can get to it from the net it can be hacked; the only question is how much time will it take and will the admins notice the attempt before they get in."

The past year, in fact, has seen attacks on organizations "from governments to security firms," hairyfeet noted, so "what makes the kernel guys any better? Linux isn't magical, it is an OS. All OSes are extremely complex and nobody knows every inch of them."

The bottom line, then, is that "it all comes down to time, what software they are running, and a little luck," hairyfeet concluded. "It doesn't make them bad, or make the OS lousy, it is just a flaw, flaws get fixed. I'm sure they minimized the damage and restored from a good backup as is sound security practice."

Tech News » Passion Is the Thin Line Between Success and Failure

Passion is infectious. Passion drives folks like Jobs and Gates to ensure the product is successful. Passion overwhelms the desire to overfocus on containing budgets, and it guarantees that enough resources are provided to make success almost a foregone conclusion. Ballmer is clearly not a tech toy or PC guy; it isn't even clear if anyone at Yahoo, let alone Bartz, really knows what Yahoo's product is.

Carol Bartz got fired last week -- the Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) Board handled it badly, and she went ugly. Steve Ballmer is also seen as a failure both inside and outside Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), and it is widely held that the only reason he hasn't been fired is that he and his best friend, Bill Gates, own the Microsoft Board.

On an even larger scale, President Obama's approval ratings indicate that if the U.S. could "Bartz" (yes her name is now a verb meaning "to fire over the phone") him, we would. On the other hand, Steve Jobs left Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) voluntarily and Apple's investors, employees and customers would do almost anything to get him to come back.

The Bartz-Jobs contrast is very sharp, but it showcases a choice that both Ballmer and Obama, or whoever eventually replaces them, could make to be successful -- a choice that AMD's (NYSE: AMD) board may have actually made correctly (I'll get to that at the end). It has a lot to do with that magic word "passion" and that's what I'll look at this week.

I'll close with my product of the week, one of my favorite software products, Corel (Nasdaq: CORL) PaintShop Pro X4.

Succeeding as CEO

You know, there are actually formal courses on how to be a CEO. The reason I know this is IBM (NYSE: IBM) put me through the program while I was there, and I'm sure other older firms have similar programs. I've since spent a lot of time studying both successful and failed CEOs while having the honor of advising a number of them.

What I find particularly fascinating is that boards, even when they are made up of experienced members, don't seem to really know what to look for in a CEO, and mistakes like those that were made with Bartz and Ballmer are common.

Ironically, on paper, both Bartz and Ballmer look better than Steve Jobs does. Were Jobs not an Apple founder, I'll bet even Apple's own board would have taken either over Jobs if given that choice back in the '90s. Remember, they hand-picked Gil Amelio before Jobs, and they only got Jobs because Amelio bought Jobs' company NeXT. Amelio looks very similar to a Bartz or a Ballmer on paper, but he didn't do well at Apple. He didn't do well at all -- there was no passion.

Compare that video to this one of Jobs when asked about going after market share. Here is another video that showcases Jobs' passion. Here is a video from an earlier time at Microsoft, and then today. This goes to the core of the problem. The very aspects of Steve Jobs that made him a legendary CEO -- aspects largely mirrored in Bill Gates himself ( who actually made a bigger impact) -- are not valued by the people selecting CEOs. This creates a problem not only in the selection, but also when it comes to growing the new CEO into the job.

Boards, often made up of experienced CEOs, are generally ineffective as well. Part of the problem is that folks like Jobs and Gates are exceptions on boards, and another part of the problem is that they often don't recognize the aspects of themselves that make them successful. Instead, they may feel somewhat inadequate because they don't have the degrees and breadth of experiences folks like Ballmer and Bartz have.

So what makes folks like Jobs and Gates Different? In a word: Passion!

Passion for Product

You see, most CEOs think the job is about meeting with investors, keeping subordinates on budget, and schmoozing with major customers. For most, it seems to be largely about maximizing their compensation while minimizing their commitment. As long as they can say product buzzwords and keep acronyms straight, they are good.

But folks like Bill Gates, and particularly Steve Jobs, have a passion for products. In fact, with Steve, you can see a huge difference between the products he cared a great deal about -- like the iPhone -- vs. those he really didn't, like Apple TV. Even for these stars, products that they don't have much interest in do poorly. Hired CEOs like Bartz and Ballmer tend to have more Apple TVs and few, if any, iPhones. Or put differently, if they were handed a billion dollars and told to start a company, the one they are running would be nowhere near the top of their list.

Passion is infectious. Passion drives folks like Jobs and Gates to ensure the product is successful. Passion overwhelms the desire to overfocus on containing budgets, and it guarantees that enough resources are provided to make success almost a foregone conclusion. Ballmer is clearly not a tech toy or PC guy; it isn't even clear if anyone at Yahoo, let alone Bartz, really knows what Yahoo's product is. The Huffington Post is a good example of a Yahoo-like company that has passion at the top (at least before AOL bought it).

For folks like Jobs, Gates and even Huffington, it isn't being CEO that is important -- it is the pleasure of defining the product, and this passion drives the related CEOs to excellence. If you think about it, though, the best generals (Patton, for instance) love battles -- they don't love being generals. The best chefs don't love running kitchens -- they love cooking masterpieces. And the best presidents love driving their unique agenda -- they don't love the job.

Funny thing is, I predicted Obama would likely fail for this very reason back in 2009 and suggested he look to Steve Jobs for a lesson on passion.

Message to Bartz, Ballmer, Obama and Other Potential CEOs and Presidents

Here is the deal. Find something you have a passion for, and use that passion to drive success. If Ballmer had a passion for PCs, smartphones and tablets, they would have succeeded. If he wants to be a successful CEO, he needs to find -- or found (he is very wealthy) -- a company that creates something he is passionate about. Microsoft clearly isn't that company, and he'll continue to starve Microsoft to death, or continue to force folks who have passion out of the company (Bob Muglia now at Juniper Networks) because he'll see them as threats -- and they will be, because they'll see Ballmer as an obstacle.

Bartz should have never taken the job at Yahoo because she clearly had no interest in a Web property; bad mouthing the board (which also made a bad choice) doesn't fix that. She needs to take ownership and learn from her mistake.

Obama made a lot of passionate promises when he ran for president. It is clear that either his passion has significantly waned -- or he really didn't have it in the first place, which is why he is failing. If healthcare was important to him, he wouldn't have let Nancy Pelosi create the nightmare Obamacare has become. He will lose because he is increasingly seen as a gutless wonder now. In short, if he doesn't find his passion, he'll follow Jimmy Carter (not an uncommon comparison) as a one-term president. It may already be too late. Cutting taxes won't secure re-election, but giving a crap might.

Wrapping Up: Finding Passion

One final point: It was clear Bill Gates lost his passion in the late '90s, and he set an example by changing jobs to do something he is passionate about. He is happier, and he is more successful than he would have been had he not made the change. Perhaps it is his example -- not Jobs' -- which the others should emulate. People don't follow leaders who have no passion about where they are trying to lead, and folks who have a passion for something find failure unacceptable.

And that, my friends, is why folks who don't have passion often fail -- because they do find failure acceptable. They are just doing a job. I think that is why Obama will be a one-term president as well; he has lost his passion. The guy who ran isn't the guy holding the job.

In the end, that's the magic that I think separates a Carol Bartz from a Steve Jobs. If boards like Yahoo's take this passion message to heart, they'll likely find that they will be more successful with selecting their next CEO. And if they don't, well take a look at Yahoo's board for the likely outcome, and wish them good luck with their next job. You know, as I come to a close, AMD's board may have gotten it right. If you look at this rare video of their new CEO, Rory Read (whom I got a chance to chat with last month), you get an idea that passion might have been at the core of their selection criteria.

By the way, this is something to think about in your own job, if you don't love what you are doing, find something you do love. You'll be better at it and happier as well, and I know this from personal experience.

Product of the Week: Corel PaintShop Pro X4

Speaking of passion, PaintShop is one of those little known products that have a passionate user base. It is an amazing offering that has many of the features of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Photoshop, but it is nowhere near as expensive or as hard to use.

Corel PaintShop Pro X4

I was a professional photographer for a while, and it still is a bit of a secret passion, though not one I have the time to indulge in often. The nice thing about PaintShop, though, is if you take a day with this product, you can easily reach semi-pro skills and do some amazing things with pictures, the same level of competence with Photoshop might take a week or more.


That's why a lot of pros actually prefer PaintShop Pro; they want to be out taking pictures -- not taking technical classes to keep up on complex tools. The other thing about PaintShop, and the reason I picked the new 4th-generation product: The Corel group that makes it has a passion for the product. You can see this passion when they demo it. They can tie each new feature back to an actual customer request and the request actually makes sense, which is rather unusual in my line of work. Much more common are features that leave you wondering just what the vendor was thinking. Corel sent me a free demo to play with, and I'm impressed.

So, if you are into photos, check out PaintShop Pro X4. It is made by a group of folks who actually give a crap about their products -- and I know a few CEOs who could learn a thing or two from them.