We've always been a big fan of E.O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist who gave the world The Ants, the Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of what goes on inside those hills. Wilson's just added to his own mountain of awards: He's won one of three 2007 TED Prizes, a kind of mini-Nobel for the Silicon Valley set. The winners were announced this week at a ceremony hosted by TED founder Chris Anderson. Also recognized were former President Bill Clinton and photojournalist James Nachtwey - they'll all collect $100,000 plus a "pledge of support" from the "TED community."

This is all good stuff, of course. Over at the Conferenza blog, though, Gary Bolles reasonably wonders whether honoring Clinton (and, really, Wilson too) might be akin to taking coal to Newcastle. This being the blogosphere, Anderson himself has logged on to reply that it's not about what TED can do for the prize-winners, but rather "which individuals can best inspire the TED community to make a difference in the world." Hmm, we're siding with Bolles on this one.

Is Microsoft's new browser, Internet Explorer 7, more or less vulnerable to attacks? Shortly after IE 7's release, security research firm Secunia charged Microsoft with, among other things, failing to fix a security hole in IE 6 that made it possible for hackers to do evil using pop-up browser windows. Microsoft disputes some of Secunia's claims, but says it's investigating Secunia's report that hackers can put deceptive website addresses in pop-up windows - something that might facilitate phishing, or attempts to trick users into giving away their passwords by imitating popular banking or e-commerce websites.

Does that leave you rattled about using IE 7? TechRepublic has the cure: A list of 10 ways IE 7 is more secure. Our favorite one is one-click removal of all personal information, from cookies to cached webpages.

TiVo is beloved by users for its thoughtfully designed digital video recorder. But in the gadget press, it's more beloved for its Perils-of-Pauline drama. Can TiVo survive in the face of el-cheapo DVR boxes that cable and satellite rent to subscribers for a low monthly fee? In the glass-half-full camp is ZDNet, which approvingly quotes analysts saying that TiVo's deals with pay-TV companies like Comcast and Cox will keep it alive. In the glass-half-empty camp is Gizmodo, which says that TiVo's new Series 3 DVR is way overpriced at $799, and doesn't deliver much more than the high-definition recorders cable companies already offer.

The most serious charge: TiVo is messing with perfection by rearranging the buttons on its vaunted remote control. Longtime TiVo fans are giving a thumbs-down to a change that makes the channel and volume controls less convenient. It hardly seems as serious as, say, losing millions of future DirecTV subscribers, but alienating hardcore TiVoids who are willing to shell out $799 for a DVR hardly seems like a smart move.

What if you could buy a 30-second spot on TV and then schedule it to run on local television around the country - all via a Web browser and in less than half an hour? That's more or less the premise of Spot Runner, a Los Angeles-based startup which just picked up $40 million from savvy investors like Allen & Co and Lachlan Murdoch and a slew of big advertising shops, among them CBS, Interpublic Group, and WPP.

CEO Nick Grouf gave The Browser a tour of Spot Runner this past summer, and we were impressed. The company's service allows users to choose from various pre-fab templates to create their video ads (think wizards, as in MS Word or Powerpoint) - and then connects them to the scheduling systems of broadcasters across the country. At the time it seemed smart, but strangely retro given the focus on conventional local TV as opposed to the Internet. GigaOm reports, however, that the company plans to "use the new investment to bring its ads to online video, video on demand, and IPTV." That approach makes a lot of sense.

Way back when, in 1995, Grouf co-founded a company called Firefly who's neato concept of an Internet "passport" was picked up by Microsoft and became a key element of the Redmond giant's lumbering .NET initiative. Clearly, Grouf is no stranger to the trials of platform development.

You thought MySpace pages were tiresome, get ready for 30-second video personals to start appearing on a channel near you.

Leave it to Mark Cuban to find more meat on the well-picked bones of the Google-YouTube story. The maverick boss of the Dallas Mavericks has cut-and-pasted to his blog a nitty gritty post-mortem of the deal that originally appeared on something called the Pho List (an insider listserv for new media pundits that you can't get to from here). The post was penned by an anonymous "veteran digital media executive."

The recount purports to tell the inside story of the YouTube-Google talks, in which $500 million of the $1.65 billion stock purchase was supposedly set aside to fend off lawsuits from media companies upset over copyrighted videos appearing on YouTube. This modern-day Deep Throat goes on to claim that, with the promise of future Google equity, YouTube was able to buy legal peace from the major labels before the Big Deal was announced.

But are any of these juicy tidbits true? Don Dodge, erstwhile senior exec at Napster, offers his assessment. Financial blogger Nick Carr starts by pronouncing the post "fantasy," but then takes a closer look at another claim made by the anonymous media exec: that the labels, in striking an equity-sharing deal with YouTube in return for calling a truce, effectively cut off their artists from sharing any of the deal's proceeds. Says Carr: "All I can say is that if I was one of those musicians I'd be asking somebody some questions."

Brightcove might finally be living up to its potential. The video-on-the-Web player long deemed a YouTube also-ran, CNET reports, has released tools that "make it easier for video producers and Web sites to insert ads into their Internet videos, syndicate their content and sell clips."

Think of Brightcove as a sort of Internet-centric cable TV company. That's how CEO Jeremy Allaire, onetime Chief Technology Officer of Macromedia, explained the business to The Browser last summer: "We have from our inception focused on enabling content producers and programmers to launch broadband programming businesses, what we describe as Internet TV." So instead of individuals sharing videos, they help people create and distribute "channels," just like on TV, with ads. In exchange - either for syndicating shows or selling them via downloads - Brightcove gets a fee.

That Brightcove also has a nicely designed video-sharing site is beside the point. The company's vision is to be a "platform," and they're very prudish about copyright violations. With former senior execs from News Corp, Comcast, Lycos, Disney, and the Discovery channel on board, we're tempted to think of the company as an adult version of YouTube. It's also tempting to assume that YouTube - which never bothered to talk in terms of ad insertions and programming tools - was superficial in its approach, and likely overvalued by Google. But then again, when was the last time a pack of "senior industry execs" ever pulled off a game-changing startup? Ego, preconceived notions, and children often seem to get in the way. We can't wait to see how Brightcove grows up.

Want to know how Adobe's capitalizing on last year's acquisition of Macromedia, the maker of Flash? It's cooking up a PDF reader that uses Flash, Read/WriteWeb reports. That's a clever way for the desktop-publishing giant to capitalize on Flash's ubiquity. While Adobe's PDF format is widespread, it hardly matches Flash's reach on the Internet - some 700 million PCs and cell phones, by Adobe's estimates. That explains why Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen is talking up Flash these days.

Flash technology is just a stopgap for Adobe's next big thing - Apollo, a converged reader that combines Flash and PDF into a single technology for displaying all kinds of Web documents. Apollo has yet to hit the streets, but GigaOm reports that Adobe has set aside $100 million to bankroll startups that adopt the technology. That's a lot of dough for a technology that's still not quite baked.

Just in time for the holiday shopping splurge: an excess of new websites to help buyers score the latest deals. BugMeNot, the popular site that lets Web surfers bypass registration forms by offering logins and passwords supplied by other users, is launching RetailMeNot, a site which lists coupon codes for popular e-commerce destinations. And then there's Glimpse, a soon-to-launch shopping portal which carries news about sales, deals, and in-store events at Macy's, Sur La Table and other retailers.

What's behind these sites? The gradual breakdown of e-mail marketing. As fast as offers flood into inboxes, users are hitting the 'delete' button: Only 1 percent of e-mail marketing actually generates a sale these days.

But newcomers like RetailMeNot are entering a crowded field, Digg users are quick to point out. FatWallet, DealCoupon, and other sites have long carried online coupon codes, and currently have vastly more listings than RetailMeNot. RetailMeNot does have BugMeNot's user-friendly reputation behind it, and Glimpse seems more elegant than most sites. (Users may recognize Glimpse as the former domain name of a defunct gay dating service.)

Does elegance or ease-of-use matter? In The Browser's experience, Googling the name of a store and the words "coupon code" reliably knocks a few dollars off the bill, but the website that helped close the deal never gets bookmarked. Both of these websites are going to have a hard tough time becoming one-stop shops.

The Browser's first New Year's prediction: Come 2007, these sites will be more fizzle than sizzle. What do you think?

Well, well: The Browser isn't the only one who's asking hard questions about Vista two months before it's available to consumers. PC Pro reports that an executive at Acer is saying Microsoft's cheapest version of Vista, Vista Home Basic, doesn't bring anything new to the table. "The new [Vista] experience you hear of, if you get Basic, you won't feel it at all," Jim Wong told the UK-based PC trade publication. That means customers will be paying for a system that's not a substantive upgrade over Windows XP at all. But what's really galling, according to Wong, is that Microsoft is increasing by 10 percent the wholesale license fees it charges PC makers for Vista Home Basic, which will cut into PC makers' already razor-thin margins. (Analysts estimate the average wholesale price of Windows at $70.)

But do PC makers have any choice? They could continue to sell Windows XP, of course, since Microsoft has yet to discontinue that product: It will still be available for a year, according to Microsoft policy. But PC makers will be hard-pressed to sell XP systems when competitors have Vista systems next to them on shelves. Looks like the PC crowd is out of luck.

To PC-industry executives like Wong, Linux must be looking better and better every day.

How does The Browser blog its way to you every morning? Believe it or not, it's through one of the simplest and easiest blogging programs - Google's Blogger. But despite Google's reputation for rock-solid, always-available Web apps, for months Blogger's been up and down like a ... well, insert your own unseemly metaphor here, folks. InfoWorld is the latest to take a look at Blogger's woes. It turns out that Blogger never moved off of its old infrastructure after Google acquired the service in 2003, and that lack of investment is now becoming increasingly evident in nonstop random outages.

The (unofficial) Google Operating System blog documents the copious apologies posted on the official Blogger Buzz blog. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, writes Google's Pete Hopkins: A new version of Blogger, still being rolled out in beta, will fix these outages for good. Still, we have to ask: Wouldn't it have been a good idea to patch up the old version before spending time on a new version?

When Amazon.com added tags to its site a year ago, it was an innovative move to embrace a trend that, until then, had been relegated to cutting-edge sites like del.icio.us or Flickr. With arguably the largest collection of product reviews online, Amazon wanted to give their prolific reviewers a fresh new tool to organize their content. Plays by Shakespeare could be tagged "drama" and dishwashers could be tagged "appliance."

The company probably didn't anticipate that the tags would be coopted by activists, but that's what happened in recent days. The anti-DRM group, Defective By Design, has launched a campaign to tag "defectivebydesign" all of the items sold on Amazon.com that have anti-piracy protections it deems unacceptable. As Boing Boing notes, it's a small campaign: "So far a few dozen Amazon users have tagged over 150 products containing DRM (Blu-ray, HD DVD, FairPlay, and more)..." but it's easy to see how the strategy could catch on with other groups championing other causes like safety, decency, price....

Social media is always full of surprises, but The Browser wonders if this sort of co-opting is appropriate or not. What do you think? Will it help or hinder Amazon sales? A good argument can be made that the activist tags add information for the shopper, and a quick look at some of the tags on Amazon's page for the Microsoft Zune shows that customers aren't shy about using tags to express other opinions. Take a look at garbage, and overhyped, and beats apple.

Call us true believers, but The Browser concludes that this sort of unruly passion can only be good for Amazon.

Welcome to Web 2.5. Software maker Six Apart has just unveiled a new member of the fast-converging worlds of blogging, social networking, and photo/video sharing: Vox, a website that's a slick descendent of GeoCities and makes MySpace seem so yesterday. Mashable enthuses: "Vox is a simple blogging platform and social network that's designed for non-technical people and families." And The Blog Herald gushes: "If one were to remove the ugliness from MySpace, add in the simplicity of Google as well as the rich features of Yahoo!, you would end up with Six Apart's new kid on the block, Vox."

Those sort of comments must unnerve Fox Interactive boss Ross Levinsohn. And if not those, then perhaps this one from a Lifehacker reader: "Bye bye myspace. This is really good."

What do you think? Is it time to declare Rupert Murdoch's investment a bust? Six Apart is another one of these small tech innovators with multiple balls in the air, and that's cause for concern about longevity. "The only question is whether Six Apart needed to roll out a whole new site," wonders Mashable, "or whether they could have integrated this impressive functionality into existing services like TypePad, their hosted blogging service...Vox is an amazing service, but it’s just not clear whether Six Apart has a grand plan here."

Product line confusion is rampant in the new media space, where fast iteration is critical to survival. The $580 million question, of course, is whether the first wave Web 2.0 giants are quite as sticky as their current valuations suggest - or whether the Web 2.5 gang, led by Vox, will simply steal their members away.

Hey kids! Want to start a company? Why not two, or three, or eleventy hundred?

Forget focusing on one thing for years and working hard to make it successful. That's so old media. Nowadays, if you're not working on at least two startups, you're just out of it. Take Digg cofounder Kevin Rose: He's also got Revision3, an online-video startup. The San Jose Mercury News recently examined the conflicts Rose faces in running multiple startups.

And then there's Evan Williams, the creator of Blogger, who's using the money he got when Google bought his first company to buy back Odeo, his second company, from his venture-capital investors. Williams himself admits he screwed up Odeo, and recently, his attention has wandered to Twitter, an Odeo spinoff. Now he's creating Obvious Corp. as an umbrella for Odeo, Twitter, and other projects, arguing that the Internet business is increasingly hits-driven, so it makes sense to have multiple projects going at once.

We can see that argument for financiers, who need to spread their risk. And if the Internet business is hits-driven, maybe the new model is Hollywood, where studios back multiple projects at once. But you don't usually see directors and stars filming multiple movies simultaneously. You get one movie in the can, and then you move on to the next one.

Williams, of course, is using his own money to back his multiple-startups theory, and says he's just in it to have fun. Well, all right then. But we'd point out to would-be imitators that if your goal is to have fun on the job, don't count on getting other people's money to do it.

Ready for a trip from Proprietaryville to Global Standardopolis? We didn't think so. But Dell wants to take you there anyway, with a video on YouTube posted by DellVlog, the official Dell videoblog (click to play):



Leave aside the faulty premise - that customers are "trapped" by single-vendor Unix solutions and are desperate to get led to the land of Linux. (The Browser knows plenty of happy Unix customers who like the systems they have because they're stable and familiar to their technical staff.) What's really sickened viewers is the blatant ripoff of JibJab, the popular online cartoon creators behind "This Land."

"Someone in Dell marketing is going to get fired, because if this was meant to be viral I want a vaccine," writes Valleywag. Guardian Unlimited calls it "a trip into cartoon hell." But Gizmodo makes the most trenchant comment, asking "who this ad is actually for" - consumers, or big businesses? If it's the latter, Dell's using the wrong vehicle to spread its message. DellVlog, try again after someone launches Fortune500Tube.

With just a bit of code, Norwegian Jon Lech Johansen, a.k.a. DVD Jon, has done what the French parliament was unable to do, despite all their Gaullist sound and fury: he has broken the three-year old locks that tie Apple's iPod exclusively to iTunes, and vice versa. The story has hit the wires this morning, though Fortune's Robert Levine laid out the deep background earlier in the week. In a nutshell, Johansen, who became famous in 1999 for breaking the security around DVDs, has launched a company called DoubleTwist that hopes to license his latest hack, which sidesteps Apple's Fairplay rights management system. "I don't like closed systems," he says. Fair enough, but Levine gets at the fascinating point:

There's an obvious question: Isn't opening the iTunes system illegal? There is no obvious answer. FairPlay is not patented, most likely because the encryption algorithms it uses are in the public domain. (Apple would not comment for this story.) And Johansen says he is abiding by the letter of the law - if not, perhaps, its spirit.

Expect to hear more from the Apple suits. Meanwhile, the news has revitalized the ongoing digital rights management (DRM) debate on Slashdot, a boisterous conversation that includes the usual entertaining diatribes, and even some exhortations to political action, as in:

No, DRM isn't evil, but it does subvert the intent of the law (to provide new works to the public) and replace it with the capitalistic, lucrecratic belief that profit is the only ends we work towards....That said, yes, the best bet is to change (or clarify) the law...Sitting in the basement burning tracks doesn't help! Get out there; vote; talk to politicians and your voting friends and family. If you don't, the law will be written by the corporations, and they do not have your best interests at heart.

The most charming tidbit in all this? Johansen maintains his own outpost on the web, a blog appropriately named So Sue Me, to which he posts ... recipes for baked goods. Perhaps Steve Jobs is looking for a recipe for Banana Walnut Bread? It doesn't get any better than this.

Almost all blogs and websites are offering RSS feeds - stripped-down, article-by-article streams of content that people subscribe to using specialized software called a newsreader. There are even Web-based newsreaders, like Bloglines and Newsgator, which let people read those articles on a Web page. Wait a second - isn't that what we used to call a website?

Exactly. And that's why there's a massive food fight brewing over who gets to sell advertising on those pages. Publishers already place ads in their RSS feeds. But the tricky part comes when Web-based newsreaders start selling their own ads on those Web pages where they republish those feeds. Weblogs Inc. cofounder Jason Calacanis says that's stealing, and called out Newsgator for putting ads on his feeds without permission.

Newsgator quickly backed down and took the ads off, saying they went up by accident. But Calacanis wasn't satisfied. Why, he asked, aren't Web-based newsreader companies striking commercial deals with publishers to sell and split ad revenue? Good question. How do you feel about ads in RSS feeds? Leave a comment below.

Remember Rocketboom, the videoblog that gained renown for either firing host Amanda Congdon or having her quit the show, depending on whose story you believe? After replacing Congdon with new host, Rocketboom producer Andrew Baron has courted controversy anew.

Now rival videoblogger Ze Frank is claiming that Rocketboom's traffic stats are inflated. Baron responded that Rocketboom had 10 times as much traffic as Rocketboom, and said he had the server logs to prove it. Of course, Frank may have just been engaging in his usual brand of satire, but he raises a good question about the validity of videoblog traffic counts. Many subscription services automatically fetch copies of the latest episode, but there's no guarantee that anyone's actually clicking "Play." Should that count? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Yahoo has upgraded its bookmarking service - and it's not del.icio.us, the Web 2.0 poster child that the Internet portal swallowed last year. Yahoo Bookmarks, a venerable old feature of the Yahoo toolbar, got the makeover instead. Who says Google is the only Internet giant to embrace chaos and let 1,000 flowers bloom?

The good news for Yahoo is that the early reviews are positive. LifeHacker pronounces itself "very pleased" with the new tool, while the Search Engine Journal says Bookmarks goes beyond most bookmarking tools, integrating seamlessly with Yahoo web search and allowing users to save thumbnail images.

But Yahoo's attempt to cleanly delineate the two products would seem a bit disingenuous. "The all new Yahoo! Bookmarks will focus on personal saving, organization, and recovery while our comrades at del.icio.us will concentrate on meeting your social bookmarking and sharing needs," writes the Yahoo Search Blog. That may sound good, but it's not entirely clear that users will get the point. Or even other Yahoo execs. The Browser recalls del.icio.us founder Josh Schachter noting recently that the power of his service is that it relies on users' self-interest, i.e. their desire to manage their own bookmarks. Ah, well.

Meanwhile, the integration of visual bookmarking by an Internet biggie isn't great news for a cabal of upstart visual bookmarking services led by pioneer Wists. Yahoo's move is likely to push them even further into "social shopping," and away from general utility bookmarking.

$5 million or $150 million? That's the question the blogosphere woke up to this morning. TechCrunch reports that Digg, the red-hot social news site, is either looking to sell itself for $150 million-plus, or will land a $5 million round of financing led by Greylock Partners. Rupert Murdoch's reportedly sniffing around, but Digg's sale price is a turnoff. The big unknown? Traffic numbers. Digg claims 20 million unique visitors, but ComScore says it's closer to 1 million.

Ahh, where would Web 2.0 be without the juicy fisticuffs over traffic estimates and company valuations. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch calls Comscore "notoriously flaky," and argues that its number is "almost certainly significantly under-reporting Digg traffic." Of course, Digg users are up in arm, arguing that $150 million short-changes the site. "That number seems so low compared to Facebook's 1 billion dollar request doesn't it?" asks one, while many others simply get worked up over the hypothetical prospect of Fox censoring the site. "Keep Digg real," pleads another Digger.

Meanwhile, Search Engine Journal anoints Google - which recently struck a deal with News Corp. to supply ads to MySpace - is the better company to buy Digg: "If Fox Interactive were to acquire Digg and somehow spin it into a MySpace partnered news site (no, not Fox News) which is monetized in part by Google AdSense…wouldn't it make much more sense for Google to acquire the company, bring Kevin Rose [Digg's founder] into Google… and have Digg and YouTube sit right across from each other in some really groovy Google 2.0 IncubatorPlex?"

Did you follow that? OK, just to reiterate: no money has actually changed hands - yet.

You've got to hand it to Jason O'Grady: He nailed a prediction this morning that Apple would upgrade its MacBook Pro laptop line to Intel's latest Core 2 Duo chips. Sure enough, the official announcement came shortly afterward.

While it's not an earthshaking surprise that Apple would keep upgrading its hardware with the latest chips available, it seems that ever since Apple switched to Intel chips, rumors about its hardware releases are on the rise. We have to wonder: Is this because partner Intel is a leaky boat? Or is it simply that because Intel releases chips on a set schedule, it's not hard to predict when Apple will get in line? (With IBM and Freescale, Apple's former chip suppliers, Apple was their lone consumer-PC customer, so it was a lot harder to guess when new chips would be ready.) Whatever the reason, it's worth noting that industry whispers about the famously tight-lipped Mac maker seem to be coming true faster than ever.

In every election season, politicians start dropping Internet references in the hopes of demonstrating their techno cred - and the Internet crowd inevitably groans.

Here's the latest gaffe: President George Bush's reference to "the Google" - yes, complete with definite article - as a search engine he uses to pull up maps. We at The Browser aren't sure if this is good or bad for Google: Will the cool kids start calling the world's favorite search engine "the Google". Will Democrats start avoiding Google Maps?

All we know is that this phenomenon is almost as old as the World Wide Web. Remember 10 years ago, when then-presidential candidate Bob Dole flubbed his website address on national TV? It's hard to forget.

The tech blogs are chattering about the infusion of another $30 million into Silicon Valley startup Jingle, which provides free directory assistance through 1-800-Free411. TechCrunch reports that the latest round brings Jingle's total funding to $60 million, giving the company a valuation north of $150 million.

The Browser thinks they're worth every penny. We HATE paying $1.25 for lame directory assistance, and we'd happily sit through a 15-second ad for 1-800-Flowers.com to get help gratis - which is how Jingle proposes to turn all that free assistance into cash money. But don't take our word for it: Talk to Goldman Sachs or the Hearst Corporation, both of which helped finance the latest round. Or talk to George Garrick, Jingle's CEO. That's what Matt Marshall at VentureBeat did, and he learned that the service is now handling over 450,000 requests a day - the "tipping point" in terms of growth. Hence the need for serious development money, says Garrick, who also told Marshall that Jingle is on track to bring in $1 million to $5 million in revenues this year, and "ten times that" next year.

That's quite a revenue spread given we're in the home stretch of 2006 - and given the debate about whether 15-second spots will pay for all the computer bandwidth that Jingle's going to need. What's more, the smarties at TechCrunch predict that Google will get into this space. (Screenwerk does them one better with an "an informal test" that compares Jingle to a hypothetical speech-enabled mobile search service from Google.) The Browser's response? We're going with our gut: One dollar is far too much to pay for a telephone number in the Google era. We sure wouldn't want to be earning our living off conventional 411 right now.

Gartner, the market research firm, made quite a splash today when it estimated that IT managers will overspend by $100 billion on technology over the next five years. Gartner recommends instead that customers buy boring stuff like "WAN optimization tools," whatever those are.

At the All Nortel All the Time blog, Mark Evans points out that this can't be good news for telecom-equipment vendors. We at the Browser couldn't agree more. $100 billion? Is that all? How on earth is the Fortune 500 going to provide its employees with delay-free YouTube viewing with anything less?

Ill-conceived spending by muddle-headed managers on needless equipment has long been the fuel of the tech economy, after all. Why not throw another log on the fire? What could be more American, after all, than buying something you don't need? This coming spending spree makes the $5 billion that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft et al. are shelling out to beef up their Internet data centers seem like spare change. Bring it on, whether we need it or not!

So IBM is suing Amazon.com over five patents which Big Blue claims the online retailer is violating. You'd think that IBM would try to cultivate Amazon as a hardware customer rather than sue it. But IBM takes the business of intellectual property pretty seriously, since it earns more than $1 billion a year from patent licensing. That might seem like reason enough to risk the bad press of suing Amazon, which has a number of hardcore fans among its shoppers.

At Bloggingstocks.com, Brian White has another take. Amazon.com, White explains, could be the next IBM with its plans to rent out server space and computing power. That's an emerging business for IBM, too, and the distraction and expense of a patent lawsuit could prevent Amazon from pouring more resources into this field.

But The Browser thinks there's more to this than just chasing lucre or hurting a new rival. Could IBM be aiming for a settlement that involves cross-licensing some of Amazon.com's vaunted e-commerce patents, like its famed one-click-shopping routine? There's one patent in particular on which IBM might have its eyes: A method for buying and selling Web services in a marketplace. IBM's been hyping "service-oriented architecture" for years - a vision of programming where people write "Web services" to connect software programs over the Internet. No doubt IBM sees itself as a better middleman to run a bazaar of Web services for its consulting clients. In that light, suing Amazon over other patents could be a smart way to get access to an even more valuable patent. What do you think are IBM's motives for suing Amazon?

Oracle has made a $219.2 million cash offer to buy MetaSolv, a telecom infrastructure player that specializes in hot technologies like VoIP and IPTV. The announcement comes just as the database giant kicks off its week-long OpenWorld conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center. And President Charles Phillips took advantage of the public forum on Sunday to defend the company's acquisition strategy, telling attendees that the company remains committed to growth by acquisition. "We get proven R&D [research and development] which supplements what we've already invested in," he said. "We also get industry experts with decades of experience - a phenomenal asset for us."

Well, they certainly get growth. InfoWorld reports that MetaSolv is Oracle's 20th acquisition in the past two years. And if the ROI on Larry Ellison's liberal spending remains uncertain for Oracle shareholders, it certainly seems to be good for San Francisco. The Chronicle notes that OpenWorld has gotten so big that it has shut down traffic on Howard Street, and "is expected to generate $60 million in revenue for the city's economy in the form of spending on hotels, restaurants, shops and tourist attractions."

Here we go again. Rumors that Time Warner will unload its troubled AOL unit reignited Sunday when AOL honcho Jonathan Miller intimated that a split from Time Warner is up for consideration: "It's possible, going forward. It's not a discussion that Time Warner has a problem with understanding or engaging in," he told The Sunday Telegraph. Miller was in London, wrapping up the $2 billion sale of AOL's European Internet access businesses - in keeping with AOL's head-first dive into the business of free, ad-supported content.

An AOL spokesman immediately threw water on the "de-merger" flames, telling Bloomberg that Time Warner has no immediate plans to sell AOL. Still, the rumor was off and running, and Slashdotters had a field day contemplating the prospect of the split and an indie AOL. Perhaps the best snipe spoofed AOL's notorious hard-sell tactics on those who would cancel their service:

AOL: Hi this is AOL, how can we help you?
TimeW: Well, I'd like to cancel my service
AOL: sorry to hear that, can we offer you our high speed internet services?

And on it went. The grief must be particularly bitter for those very same tele-sales operators, 1,300 of whom were sacked last week as AOL closed down call centers in Arizona and New Mexico. Ouch. Transition is tough.

Think digital downloads are the end of CDs? Try USB flash-memory fobs you can plug into your computer and play. Keane has released a new single in the U.K. on a flash fob, the BBC reports, for 4 pounds (about $7.50). Instead of clicking through an online store and waiting for the song to download, fans can just buy the single at a store, plug the fob into a PC's USB port, and listen away.

Keane's not the first band to do this - Barenaked Ladies sold an album for $29.98 on small, portable memory devices last year - but its single release is by far the cheapest flash-fob release to date. And it's unlikely to be the last. Unlike CDs, whose manufacturing costs have been flat over time, prices on flash-memory chips continue to fall. As the price of flash fobs drop, expect to see more of them carrying tunes on store shelves.

Artful spin, dodgy claims about rivals, mudslinging and outright lies - either we're in the midst of an election season, or the middle of a videogame-console war. A quick look at The Browser calendar tells us....we're in both!



Sony's latest whopper, Engadget reports, is that Microsoft's Xbox 360 costs $698, $200 more than Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3. That's something of a headscratcher, considering the retail price of an Xbox is $299, which is $200 less than the $499 PS3. Sony's new math is that to get as many features with the Xbox as you do with the PS3, you have to add an external hard drive, an HD-DVD player, a wireless controller, and an online subscription.

But Sony's new math doesn't add up, Engadget points out. For one thing, none of those extras are required to play videogames on an Xbox. And for $399, you can get an Xbox system which includes a hard drive, a wireless controller, and a basic online subscription. Granted, watching high-definition movies will cost you extra, but is that why gamers buy consoles?

Where Sony really crosses the line is when its so-called "fact sheet" claims that Xbox users are "required to buy" these extras. The Browser's question is this: "Required" in what sense? Is Sony still smarting over the fact that Microsoft beat them to a punch - by a full year - with the Xbox?

One of the more credible threats to MySpace world domination is Community Connect, the company behind ethnically-targeted social networks like BlackPlanet.com and migente.com. The company hit the media radar in late September when BusinessWeek proclaimed niche networks the "second wave of social networking," and noted that, with an estimated $20 million in revenues, Community Connect could well be the third-largest social network by sales.

This week the company launched music sub-sections on BlackPlanet and MiGente, hoping to exploit their niche advantage. The headline stat is that more than 175,000 Hip Hop artists are already promoting their music on BlackPlanet.com. The Browser doesn't follow the urban music scene as closely as we'd like, but, if we did, we'd no doubt choose BlackPlanet over MySpace for browsing Hip Hop. The same would be true if we were into "Dirty South," which is a sub-genre we'd never heard of until browsing the site this morning.

There's not much blogosphere buzz yet about the new Community Connect initiative, and the content is a bit thin beyond the label-built pages for Diddy and LL Kool J. Still, this sort of move makes sense for Community Connect, and bodes ill for MySpace. As a grizzled vice president of sales at a top media conglomerate once told The Browser: targeted content always wins out over general interest media.

Thought that Google's going to blanket San Francisco with free Wi-Fi any day now? Think again.

San Francisco resident and tech enthusiast "Davis Freeberg" - the nom de blogue of a local investment advisor - has detailed the woes Google and its partner EarthLink have faced in getting permission to roll out a free, citywide Wi-Fi network. The city's infamous politics, Freeberg writes, look ready to sandbag the project, with the Wi-Fi network's backers "discovering that dealing with the local San Francisco political scene is about as fun as being set up on a blind date with Mike Tyson after being rubbed down in meat sauce."

Freeberg attended a "town hall" meeting where a parade of local eccentrics laid out their conditions before Google would be permitted to give the residents of the city free Internet access:

"Some of the crazier demands that were suggested at the meeting included a 'requirement' for every San Francisco renter to sign a lease addendum with their landlords before being allowed to install a WiFi card in their PC, forcing Google to agree to transport kids back and forth to the Zoo in their Google busses and a requirement for EarthLink to pay the electrical costs for running computers in order to prevent brownouts."

The Browser would understand if Google decided to pack up its routers and go home to Mountain View, where residents are asking for technical help with connecting to the network, not a set of loony-tunes demands. But Freeberg reports that Google executive Chris Sacca bravely soldiered through the meeting, deflecting technically impossible or financially punitive requests with grace and patience. Luckily for the City by the Bay, Google is soldiering on. Freeberg does have one suggestion: Next month vote out the supervisors who allowed this humilating charade to take place. Hear, hear.

Engadget is reporting that Logitech, the giant computer-peripherals maker best known for its computer mice and keyboards, has acquired Slim Devices. For Engadget, it's all about the gear, and they give a nice rundown of the companies' competing wireless music systems. But what's the deal really about? Slim, famed for the Squeezebox music player which connects your PC's music library to your living-room stereo, is known for smart software, not just hardware. And as Apple proved, to really succeed in digital music, you have to pair sleek hardware with equally well-designed software.

People used to scoff at the hardware-plus-software approach, saying that open platforms like Microsoft Windows - for which anyone can build compatible hardware - would win out in music players, too. Rrrrright. That explains why iPod sales are up 35% and Microsoft is now aping Apple's approach by rolling out its own Zune player in November.

Logitech's Slim buy also recognizes another truth of the hardware-plus-software equation: Done well, combining the two yields higher margins, as consumers pay more for unique, software-driven features. That should help Logitech in arenas beyond just digital music, as it aims to keep rolling out upgraded gear that can command a premium on computer-store shelves.

Yahoo's drubbing in the market and the media continues, but the portal is finally throwing some deft counterpunches. Yesterday Yahoo announced two savvy maneuvers involving ad technology. One was the buyout of AdInterax. In the second deal, Yahoo led a $45 million round of investment in Right Media, a New York-based ad-network .

Both deals are intriguing. AdInterax, says ClickZ "is a hosted technology provider that enables non-technical users to create rich media ads through a drag-and-drop interface." Apparently the idea is to create a self-service tool that would allow Yahoo advertisers to create rich media ads - much as they currently do for text ads. Sounds promising.

Meanwhile, The Browser has been following the story of Right Media for some time. Founded by Michael Walrath, a former DoubleClick exec, the company has built an open network for ad trading. Think NASDAQ for ads. Instead of both advertisers having to interact with Google - and to play by Google's rules - a true open market lets participants contract directly with each other. AdAge notes the Right Media's network is now trading two billion ad impressions each day, and that Walrath and his crew believe they can one day trade offline ads too - like TV or radio. (For background, look here.)

Word has it that the $45 million invested by Yahoo and Red Point gave them a 20% share -pegging Right Media's valuation at $225 million.

The Browser just loves a good round of mud-slinging. Apple has just disclosed that a number of video iPods shipped since mid-September are infected with the RavMonE virus, and is quick to take aim at its arch rival to the north for the problem, reports CNET.

The RavMonE virus affects only the Windows operating system. It turns out, a Windows machine at an unidentified contractor that manufactures iPods might be at fault. Apple says there have been fewer than 25 reports of a problem.

In an apology posted on its web site, Apple takes the blame but drags Microsoft down with it: "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

The Browser looked but there isn't a nice juicy plug for OS X in that partial mea culpa. But we're pretty sure that Steve Jobs & Co. are going to be eager to make its opinions of Vista, the long-overdue operating system that's due out soon from Microsoft, well known.

As anyone with a pulse knows, Apple makes some pretty slick consumer electronics. But servers, too? Yep. Apple's latest server, the XServe Xeon is finding a lot of love from one top critic, InfoWorld's Enterprise Mac blog. InfoWorld's Tom Yager has taken a close look and likes what he sees.

Apple has taken the iPod Nano design and applied it to the XServe. With one key exception: instead of slipping easily into your pocket, the XServe is easy to take apart. That means faulty parts can be removed and replaced without undoing ribbon cables and unscrewing tiny fasteners with special tools. Instead, the parts slide out of position with just a little pressure - but stay in place during ordinary operation. Talk about "ease of use" for the data center.

There's just one small problem, notes Yager. Apple's XServe, at $2,999, costs twice as much as competing Xeon servers. It's not a given that sysadmins will flock to a more expensive server when they could easily junk and replace a cheaper one - and avoid the hassle of disassembling the XServe to fix a faulty part.

The Google monolith marches on....eMarketer reports that the search giant's share of online advertising should hit 25 percent this year and 30 percent next year. Can anyone stop it? Yahoo hasn't, although it's just released early - make that "less late than expected" - its Panama search-ad system. Ask.com, meanwhile, is getting rave reviews for its latest upgrade, but isn't reaping the ad dollars that typically follow, Virtual Economics notes.

When it comes to competition, Google doesn't have a lot to worry about. What should keep Sergey and Larry up at night, though, are their bungling employees. Look at Google Video - a $1.65 billion debacle given the price the company had to pay YouTube just to get in the game. Google's subpar attempts at non-search services have been amply documented: Orkut, Google Talk, Google Finance, Froogle, and other me-too products haven't gained traction. Even Gmail and Google Maps haven't unseated their top competitors.

On a less serious note, there's the "crafty chica" who works at Google and got the blogosphere worked up when she accidently posted a recipe for white-chocolate sugar skulls to the official Google Blogger blog instead of her personal blog. Hardly a marketplace disaster, but it raises questions about the intellectual capacity of Google's army of new recruits.

Here comes very bad news for Verizon and the cable companies: A new technology called DSM, or Dynamic Spectrum Management, could allow ordinary copper telephone wires to transmit data at gigabit speeds, GigaOm reports. Call it DSL on steroids: DSM solves problems with electromagnetic interference in copper lines that has been the biggest obstacle in souping them up for ultra-high-speed Internet connections.

Such a development could obviate the billions of dollars Verizon is spending on a new fiber-optic network. It also poses a threat to cable companies, which may not be able to upgrade their hybrid coax networks to gigabit speeds as cheaply as phone companies could with DSM. AT&T's move to slow down its fiber rollout looks prescient in light of the potential DSM threat.

It's official: The exploding-battery scandal has killed off the term "laptop" once and for all. An authority no less august than the Consumer Products Safety Commission has issued a diktat: "Do not use your computer on your lap."

As The Browser ponders this government commandment from a notebook computer that - all right, we confess - is not securely stationed on a heatproof surface, we're looking for someone to blame. And Sony looks like a fat, juicy target. We're not the only ones steamed: Macworld UK has picked up a Reuters report that Toshiba may sue rival Sony after recalling more than one million notebooks with Sony-made batteries. Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Lenovo have also been affected - they've just quietly extracted payment for the cost of their recalls from Sony.

The latest victim? Sony itself. Also a computer maker, Sony is recalling some of its Vaio notebooks. And the cost of the battery disaster may put a large dent in earnings: The company earlier pegged the cost at $257 million, but that doesn't take into account the latest recalls.

The fine people at Folksonomy have done a lovely job putting together seven rules for naming your new Web 2.0 company. Our favorite is rule number two:

When Flickr exploded in popularity, quite a few entrepreneurs seemed to think that it set some sort of de facto standard for Web 2.0 naming conventions. It didn't. Naming your service Locatr, Bookmarkr, Zooomr, Preloadr, or Frappr doesn't put you next in line on the Yahoo acquisition queue. Either go for an expensive generic name that accurately describes what you're about, or be creative by choosing an effective and unique name that stands out.

For the record, witty posts about web site naming conventions is one of the clearest signs of tech market frothiness. And that's particularly true when names like GreedTube start popping up. While you're on Folksonomy, check out their interview with GreedTube co-founder Noah Hayes.

Update: Close readers may have noticed that we didn't actually link to the GreedTube site above. That's because we noticed that it re-directed us to YouTube, and comments on the site suggested that, Google triumph aside, the YouTubers weren't too pleased with the knock-off. We emailed Noah Hayes at Axle Networks to find out more, and he confirmed our suspicions:

"I recently received a cease and desist order from Youtube, so the site has been shut down. This probably isn't much of a suprise. However, within the next month, my company will be announcing a new venture which involves user generated content and paid incentives. Unlike GreedTube, we've been working on this new site for a few months now...."

We'll keep you posted.
-The Mgmt.

The Browser is having some deep thoughts about the blogosphere today. Has the time come for consolidation? It seems blogging has grown so fast, so soon, and is now so fragmented that most are past the point of positive ROI.

What got us pondering the meaning of it all was news of the latest blog to strike an enviable VC deal. Sugar Media, a year-old blog network noted for its celebrity gossip site PopSugar, has raised $5 million from Michael Moritz, the resident genius at Sequoia Capital (you know: Google, Yahoo, YouTube....). Michael Arrington reports that Sugar already draws three million unique monthly visitors and has plans to "launch four new blogs in the next month or so." Such aggressive growth plans makes particular sense in light of Om Malik's comment that the Mortiz M.O. is to put "business model on the backburner and instead focusing on market share."

In other blog news, John Battelle's Federated Media - the blog advertising shop that powers sites like Digg and Boing Boing - has signed a deal to manage the ads on something called SportsBlogs Nation.

It's time to ask the question: Barely three years into the commercial-blogging revolution, is the blog network roll up already upon us? After all, how many celebrity gossip blogs can there be (not to mention tech business blogs....).

Here are two words that are sure to make for an unhappy meal: viral infection. That's what "winners" of a McDonald's MP3-player giveaway in Japan got along with their free tunes, Engadget reports. Some of the MP3 players apparently came with a copy of the QQPass trojan-horse software, which copies user passwords and e-mails them to a hacker.

Sadly, this isn't the first time an MP3 player has shipped with a virus. Creative Technology released some infected Zens last fall. At the Browser, we're starting to think that our all-beef patties get more thorough inspections than our music players.

Here's an odd turn of events: People are blogging about Sony - and the buzz is good. Kotaku notes that Sony's PlayStation 3, previously criticized for being overpriced and hard to program, won Best of Show at the DigitalLife conference. And Eurogamer says that the PS3's online features at least match Microsoft's Xbox Live service. Meanwhile, Sony's instant-messaging and VOIP device, called Mylo, is now winning praise from the likes of VOIP blogger Andy Abramson for smartly bundling a year of free T-Mobile Wi-Fi service. (Mylo had been dinged for only working with Wi-Fi hotspots, not high-speed cell-phone networks). And the Sony Reader, though still considered overpriced at $350, is getting good reviews from the ink-and-paper crowd.

Now if only Sony could deliver a music player that's worth buying, we'd say Howard Stringer has a shot at delivering on his promise of "champion products."

Update: Richard Edelman has in fact finally issued a public mea culpa: "I want to acknowledge our error in failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset. This is 100% our responsibility and our error; not the client's." Ouch. Early comment seems to be of the "better late than never" variety. We can't fail to notice the sound business judgment in taking the fall for Wal-Mart.

Ah, the wrath of a blogosphere scorned. Earlier this month BusinessWeek told the story of the faux blog, "Wal-Marting Across America." Ostensibly the blog was the down-homey diary of a couple RV-ing across America by way of Wal-Mart parking lots. As it turns out, the couple was getting financial incentives from Wal-Mart's public relations firm, Edelman. (This of course reminds The Browser of ugly faux blog disasters past.) Once the blood was in the water, it didn't take long for the sharks to attack. First the couple was outed, and then the blog went abruptly off-line. Now PR industry blogger Shel Holtz is laying it on thick, wondering why in this era of transparency Richard Edelman and his braintrust haven't stepped up with a mea culpa.

It's great stuff. There's nothing like a public spat between PR gurus. And it's particularly informative to learn what the PR kings do when their own scandal erupts: stay silent.

Between sexual predators and touchy Secret Service agents, maintaining a MySpace page can be tough. That's what 14 year-old Julia Wilson discovered last week when two Secret Service agents pulled her out of a high school class. They wanted to interrogate her about the image of the President she had posted with "Kill Bush" scrawled across the top and a dagger stabbing his hand. "I wasn't dangerous. I mean, look at what's (stenciled) on my backpack — it's a heart," a teary Wilson told the Associated Press. "I'm a very peace-loving person. I'm against the war in Iraq. I'm not going to kill the president."

OK, so the Feds could have been a little more sensitive, but the bigger question is how many agents do we have tracking "Kill Bush" postings on MySpace? And are teenage girls really in the right demographic for would be assassins? Wouldn't a call to the parents have sufficed?

The UK's Guardian has an intriguing little story today: Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons (who, one must disclose, signs the Browser's paychecks) is negotiating with YouTube to deal with the problem of videos that infringe his company's copyrights, and now that Google's buying the video-sharing site, Parsons says he's going to move those negotiations to his company's partner, which owns a 5 percent stake in Time Warne's AOL unit. A sensible approach, and smarter than suing, right?

But once the story got released into the blogosphere, "in negotiations" somehow got translated intto "Dick Parsons to Sue Goobe." That was the inaccurate scream from GigaOm. (Not to mention ineloquent: "Goobe" for the combination of Google and YouTube?) John Battelle's headline at Searchblog, inaccurately picks up the meme from Boing Boing: "Sour Grapes: Time to SueTube?" Pete Cashmore at Mashable is one of the few to get the story straight: "What Parsons hasn't said to the press is that he's necessarily going to sue Google: he just says he'll pursue the infringements."

It's a case study in how the blogosphere propagates