News and Analysis to 29th November 2005
Google’s
C2C
Forget consumer to consumer, the
next innovation to roll out of the Googleplex is click-to-call. This represents
next generation pay-per-click advertising, which is where the advertiser pays
only when potential buyer click on their ads. With C2C, on clicking the advert
the advertiser will phone you. eBay had this in mind when it purchased Skype,
the ‘free Internet’ phone call company. It is not clear as to how Google, whose
share price has topped $400, making it more valuable than Dell, HP and Yahoo,
intends to handle the telephone costs. Possibly it is planning to buy ebay?
BT
in danger of becoming dog food
Richard Granger, director general of IT at the UK National
Health Service, has already built a reputation as a no-nonsense IT–services
customer who is determined to raise standards in the IT supplier community.
This is to be applauded. He recently blamed delays in the $10bn Connecting for
Health program on the variable ability of suppliers. He stated that BT Group
had a challenge on their hands to complete their obligations in respect of the
London cluster, valued at $1bn. Vividly he described his approach to non
performing suppliers, drawing an analogy to sled-pulling huskies. When one of
the dogs goes lame, it is shot and fed to the others. The extra nutrition
improves the performance of the remaining dogs, and the fear of being next has
a significant motivating effect. It is not known whether the NHS has actually
issued Mr Granger with a gun. And it is difficult to know whether the remaining
suppliers are starting to salivate or urinate, as the number of ‘other
suppliers’ to blame potentially decreases.
FBI
FAQ
Whether you enjoy the odd foray
into the far side of the web or not, you are advised to ignore emails
supposedly originating from the FBI. These emails contain a variant of the
Sober virus, and have a variety of subject lines, including “your IP was
logged”. Should you open the attached questionnaire, the virus will plunder
your PC, looking for email addresses to virally infect. Email filtering firm
MessageLabs caught almost 3 million copies in its first day, making it the
biggest outbreak in 2005.
Get
your facts. Right!
Once mighty Novell, who is a
shadow of its former self for attempting a couple of decades ago to cut
Microsoft up (and as a consequence joined the Microsoft Road Kill Club) has the
audacity to question statements issued by the software giant’s ministry of
information. After years of staggering down the hard shoulder, Novell has regained
purpose as a Linux distributor. This puts it at odds with Seattle’s most high
profile Linux hater, which has an ongoing propaganda program in place to
generally undermine the growing popularity of Linux. It commissioned a study by
Security Innovation to highlight the benefits of Windows over Linux. The
Microsoft certified partner(!) duly obliged and managed to build a favourable
picture based on a statistically nanoscopic sample pool of six system
administrators.
Sun
dances with database vendors
Directionless Sun Microsystems
is taking an interest in databases. It has decided to incorporate the open
source PostgreSQL into its Solaris operating system, which itself has recently
become open source. This may cause tension with Oracle, whom has recently
announced that Solaris would be the preferred platform for its database
software. This move offers all the disadvantages of irritating Oracle, along
with potentially incurring the wrath of the competition regulators, as
Microsoft has found when it has attempted to bundle software into its operating
system. But worst of all it is just poor system design. There is no market for
‘database hardware’, given that this is a tack Sun is taking to selling more
kit. That’s why, as old school techies might recall, Mumps and Pick do not
exist today.
