With the Microsoft earnings report this week, the big news was the first ever year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue for the software giant.
But to me the interesting news in the report was the fact that the company's servers and tools unit surpassed the client unit (which includes the Windows OS) to become the biggest profit area for Microsoft. Servers and tools was also the only unit to post a revenue gain over the same quarter last year.
With mergers and company failures regularly in the news, the amount of healthy competition in the technology world is clearly decreasing. This, of course, means that more companies will gain a monopoly in their markets.
This got me thinking about monopolies in general and the companies that are typically seen as monopolists in the technology arena. Just which tech companies are true monopolists, and which ones fall short of being a monopoly?
My dictionary defines a monopoly as "exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of suppy, or concerted action, exclusive possession or control, a commodity controlled by on party, one that has a monopoly".
My colleague Joe Wilcox recently posted on the Microsoft Watch blog an interesting article entitled "The Problem with Netbooks". In this article he puts forth a compelling argument why netbooks won't last as a significant segment and will become subsumed into laptops or disappear altogether.
If I had read Joe's article a week before he posted it I probably would have agreed with nearly all of his arguments. But after traveling to DEMO 09 and getting a firsthand look at how many people are using netbooks, my opinions on the category have changed a bit.
Xandros has long been a major player when it comes to taking Linux and open source technologies and making them easy for non-techie people to use. With Presto, they are taking a stealth approach to work with Windows systems but to make it more attractive to boot into Presto as opposed to Windows.
Click here to see screenshots of IE 8 With the release of Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1, we are finally in the home stretch of the long trip to the latest version of the Microsoft Web browser.
And since this is a release candidate, this means that, unless there is a major problem found, this version of Internet Explorer 8 is pretty much the version that will be officially released. So, how will IE 8 stack up?
Well, if compared solely with earlier versions of Internet Explorer, IE 8 is a massive improvement that boosts the usability, security and flexibility of the Microsoft browser.
This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the first Macintosh computer, easily one of the most influential computers of all time.
As many like to point out, almost all of the innovations of the Macintosh (its windowed GUI, its use of the mouse, its intuitive interface touches) had been introduced previously, many of them at Xerox Parc. But while original innovators are important, often just as important are those who can take these innovations and make something that is truly useful to many.
The Mac was definitely this type of innovation. For those who had used other computers and mainframe systems of the time, trying the Mac led to a light bulb moment. The first time you used a Mac you usually felt, oh, this is how a computer is supposed to work.
People say computers are too complex and too prone to security problems. These same people will often also say this is one of the reasons we don't have more broadband and general PC adoption.
But don't worry. These people have a solution. They'll replace your hard-to-use and worm-infested computer with something that "just works," like your toaster.
That's right! To take advantage of the next phase of the Internet, you won't need to deal with PCs and their incompatible hardware and plethora of operating systems and applications. That's because the next device you use to access the Internet will be an appliance, you know, like a refrigerator or a toaster. And what could be easier than that?
Wow, that sounds great. And I'm sure it would work, if using the Internet and doing modern computing were as easy as toasting a piece of bread (though given the amount of burnt toast I've encountered in my life, maybe that isn't all that easy).
Click to see the slide show When you cover and analyze emerging technologies, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement and the promise of these new technologies. And it's even easier to look at these technologies only from a positive angle.
And what's not to like? After all, most emerging technologies were designed from the ground up to bring about positive ends. Their creators want to improve people's lives, boost productivity, cure disease, provide security and bring about new waves of technology where anything is possible.
But almost any new technology that has a positive side also has a negative and more dangerous side. Technologies that can cure disease can also cause disease. Products that provide convenience imperil safety and privacy. Tools that ensure security also help secure criminals from law enforcement.
Such is the nature of innovation. But some new technologies are more dangerous than others. With that in mind, here is my list of the 10 most dangerous new technologies either available today or being worked on for the near future. Please comment below and let me know what technologies would make your list.
And, oh yeah, I decided to limit this list specifically to computing technologies, so that's why there aren't any biotech or genetics entries.
Click the image to see the list "You get what you pay for." It's an old saying, one that typically means that if something is free, then it probably isn't worth much.
But in the world of technology, the exact opposite is often the case. Over the last 20 years many of the most innovative and useful products and technologies that we've seen are those that users and businesses could take advantage of for no upfront cost whatsoever.
And while there are some people out there who disparage free and open-source products and technologies as being copycats of commercial products (not that those don't exist), in many cases it is the free and open-source products that are breaking new ground and setting the course for other free and commercial products to follow.
With that in mind, I've put together this list of 20 free products and technologies that proved to be innovative and that ended up changing the future of technology. Some were open source, some were freeware, and some started out free, flirted with commercial models and then returned to free status. But in all cases, users of these technologies got quite a bit of value from them. In fact, they got quite a bit more than what they paid for, even if they had paid a lot more than nothing.
So take a look at my list of the Most Innovative Free Technologies, and comment below to let me know what technologies and products would make your list.
One Laptop Per Child's XO (commonly referred to as the $100 laptop) is designed to change the world by bringing computing resources to children in the developing world. But the many innovations in the XO may also end up changing the world of technology.
When you first see the XO the thought that immediately jumps to mind is "kid's toy." With its bright green coloring, built-in carrying handle, funny rabbit ears and rubber membrane keyboard, it looks like something that Fisher-Price might put out.
But then you pick it up and realize how sturdy and well built the XO is. And then you turn it on, and discover that you are connecting wirelessly to the Internet and to other XO users that are creating a local network. You find lots of software designed for kids but also find some groundbreaking collaboration tools that let you work with others in ways that outshine some of the best corporate groupware.
Oh yeah, even though bright sunshine is beating down upon the laptop screen, you're having no trouble reading the display. But the sunlight is OK since it's powering your system through a small low-cost solar cell, and the XO doesn't need much power, running at a small fraction of what laptops normally considered green run at.
This is the XO, a system that was born when MIT legend Nicholas Negroponte set out to build a $100 laptop in order to make it possible to deliver computers to kids and schools in developing countries. And while the XO didn't make the $100 target price (instead currently coming in at around $175), it does now sit nearly ready to be deployed around the world.
I recently had the opportunity to spend some time at the offices of the One Laptop Per Child project and got to take a first had look at the final beta version of the XO, dubbed B4. I also had the chance to speak to OLPC President Walter Bender and Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen.
Based on earlier looks I'd had of the $100 laptop, I expected to be impressed simply by the economy, low power capabilities and wireless mesh features of the XO. But what I saw firsthand exceeded these expectations.
Put simply, the XO is one of the most revolutionary computer systems that I've seen in some time. Throughout the entire time I was looking at the XO, I was regularly thinking, why can't my new expensive laptop do this? The technologies that the OLPC's XO are introducing could go a long way towards changing the face of future systems, especially in the area of power consumption.
