With a sip of the finest chardonnay, of course.

However, according to AdAge Microsoft has actually made changes to one of the Laptop Hunter ads.

Her mom, Sue, asks her why she would pay twice the price. To which Lauren gives her the steely look of a future prosecutor and says: “I wouldn’t.”

A Microsoft representative told AdAge: “We slightly adjusted the ads to reflect the updated pricing of the Mac laptop shown in the TV advertisement. This does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC.”

It’s the one featuring Lauren, the aspiring law student, and her mom, who claimed that Lauren usually gets what she wants.

Recently, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner claimed that Apple’s legal vultures had called Redmond, aggrieved at alleged inaccuracies in Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters campaign.

So Microsoft does keep an eye out for Apple. And perhaps even an ear out for Apple’s lawyers.

This loving familial exchange has now been edited out. The old version has been removed from YouTube and replaced with a new version, in which Lauren merely says: “It seems like you’re paying a lot for the brand.”

In the original version of the ad, Lauren, who wants to spend a maximum of $1,700 on her computing dreams, offered this competing statement: “This Mac is $2,000, and that’s before adding anything.”

He described the call as being better than an evening with Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. Well, perhaps not quite. But he certainly used phrases like “greatest single phone call,” as if only multiple phone calls from Cupertino would have made him more excited.

The AG-HMC40 is slated to ship in August for $3,195.

Smaller and lighter than either of its line mates, with a much simpler design, the HMC40 is also the first in its line to includes a trio of full HD resolution 1/4.1-inch 3MOS sensors rather than CCDs. It incorporates a 12X zoom lens of as-yet unknown (to me) focal-length range and can shoot 10.6-megapixel stills (obviously interpolated, since none of the sensors are that high resolution).

Like its brethren, the HMC40 will support up to 21-megabits-per-second recording in a range of HD formats, including 1080 and 720 at 60i, 30p, and 24p frame rates. Pro connections include a removable XLR mic input. Interestingly, the camcorder also has consumer-type features like a touch screen, face-detection AF, and prerecord.

(Credit:
Panasonic)

Interface21, which now goes by SpringSource, is looking to add a little bounce to its business by buying fellow open-source company Covalent Technologies.

With the acquisition, SpringSource is looking to build on Covalent’s products and services that target Apache Software Foundation open-source projects, such as the Apache Tomcat Application Server and Apache Geronimo Application Server. Both companies derive revenues from selling support services.

The “M” Johnson is referring to is Sun Microsystem’s megabuyout deal of open-source database company MySQL. And the “A,” of course, is for Apache. Both are part of the popular open-source development products referred to as LAMP, which stands for Linux, Apache Web server, MySQL, and the PHP development language that is used by enterprise companies and on the Internet.

In summing up the benefits of the merger, Rod Johnson, SpringSource’s chief executive, noted in his blog: “Not only does Covalent bring Apache leadership, but our combined company now has significant leadership on Apache Tomcat and HTTP. Two weeks ago, Sun paid $1 (billion) for the “M” in LAMP. Now that Covalent’s outstanding Apache expertise and services are part of SpringSource, we are strong leaders in the “A.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But it’s unlikely that SpringSource used up all of the $10 million it raised in venture funding last May to do the deal.

SpringSource, which announced the acquisition Tuesday, develops a popular open-source tool called Spring Framework designed to help accelerate the development of Java applications for enterprise servers.

Clicking on the “add to your map” option on the right side of any photo now pops up a mini Yahoo Map with an address finder. Previously, users were required to go into Flickr’s somewhat complicated Organizr tool and add geotags en masse. If it’s your first time using the Flickr map to geotag your photos, you’ll still need to hit the Organizr, but only to change the initial privacy settings.

I’ve already used the system on a handful of photos, and it’s far more efficient for one-off shots than using the Organizr tool. However, if you’re planning to geotag three or more shots, it might be worth it to stick with the Organizr if only for its batch-editing capabilities.

To help speed up the process of tagging your photos with the new pop-over map, there’s a new recommendation system that will suggest landmark locations or neighborhoods, based on where you’ve dragged your shot. If the system has any potentially overlapping areas, they’ll be listed as suggestions that you can simply click on to re-map your shot. I found this to work well with things like parks or general neighborhoods, but for businesses you’re out of luck.

On a side note, if you’re an
iPhone user and wondering why photos you’ve uploaded to Flickr via e-mail are not showing up on Flickr’s map (despite having geocodes in the EXIF data) it seems some of that geodata is being stripped out by Apple before it hits Flickr. To upload shots from your phone without having that information stripped, you can use several third-party Flickr uploaders that tie into Flickr, like AirMe or Flickup.

You can now geo-tag photos right on top of any photo you're looking at. It'll also recommend places nearby in case you're trying to remember where you shot the picture.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

On Wednesday, Sun announced that it is preparing to introduce solid-state drive (SSD) technology that “will completely change how server and storage infrastructure is designed and deployed in enterprise data centers.” Sun said it is already shipping Solaris ZFS software “optimized” for SSDs.

Though Sun is not specifying suppliers, Intel confirms that it has collaborated with Sun on SSD development for servers. Intel is slated to bring out high-capacity SSDs in the second half of the year.

Sun follows storage vendor EMC, which announced integration of solid-state drives into its product portfolio in January.

Solid-state drives give “customers 3x better performance at one-fifth the energy consumption of traditional spinning (hard disk drive) disk offerings,” according to a prepared statement by Sun.

Sun StorageTek server array

(Credit:
Sun Microsystems)

Solid-state drive suppliers Intel and Samsung have both discussed the huge potential for servers. Samsung said previously that companies like Citibank and American Express peg server performance on IOPS, or input/output operations per second. Hard disk drives typically achieve 120 to 150 IOPS, while SSDs are in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 30,000 IOPS, according to Samsung.

Intel also sees SSDs playing a role in the server market as a “performance accelerator.” The chipmaker cited a streaming video example where 10 SSDs could essentially handle the same workload as 62 high-performance hard disk drives.

In addition to performance benefits, SSDs “save on energy costs compared to traditional Fibre Channel hard drives (and) decrease server and storage sprawl in already maxed-out data centers,” Sun said. “SSDs consume around one-fifth of the power of both memory…and disk drives, have no rotating media and consume very little power when not in use.”

Sun sees SSDs as a watershed technology. “Flash SSD is the most exciting innovation to happen to system and storage design in over a decade. By mid-2009, it will be in the majority of servers and deliver more capacity than DRAM and far greater overall system performance and energy efficiency,” said John Fowler, executive vice president of the Sun Systems Group.

Intel is targeting SSDs for consumer and server storage

(Credit:
Intel)

Plunging cost is another factor. “Enterprise-class Fibre Channel hard disk drives have only exhibited a 40 percent year-over-year price decline in the last decade, while the Flash SSD price per gigabyte continues to fall between 50 to 70 percent annually,” Sun said.

The Mountain View, Calif., company is expected to deliver Flash-based products to market in the second half of 2008. Sun did not cite price or capacities. Today, typical large-capacity enterprise SSD capacities start at 32GB but can range up to 512GB.

As the founder and program chair for the Open Source Business Conference, I know what a business conference looks like. And as a regular attendee of the excellent O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), I know what a great developer event looks like, too.

But this year’s inaugural LinuxCon, put on by the business and developer-friendly Linux Foundation, is trying to bring the two worlds together this September in Portland.

I think it might succeed.

Linux and all open-source software has matured to a place where end-user involvement in the development process is no longer a nice-to-have, but a requirement, as I suggested earlier today. This collaboration is a critical piece of the development process for any open-source project or company, and it’s something the Linux Foundation continues to demonstrate itself well-qualified to generate.

LinuxCon comes at an interesting time in the industry, one of economic uncertainty that Linux and open source are well-suited to overcome. Linux and open-source expertise translate across companies. Knowledge isn’t necessarily specialized on one product; it is focused on technologies and a transparent development process where everyone learns by contributing. It’s a really smart place to focus a career.

It’s also a great place to grow one’s understanding. Developers can learn the business issues driving Linux and open-source adoption, while business-minded folks can participate in developer sessions that should provide insight into optimal ways to profit from open source. It’s the first time that the Linux Foundation will bring all of the Linux stakeholders into one place to work on the technology and business aspects of advancing the operating system. And, it’s open to everyone. No invitation required.

So consider yourself invited.

The LinuxCon program is now public and includes some exceptional speakers, perhaps the biggest name being Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel. LinuxCon also includes Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical), Bob Sutor (IBM), James Bottomley (Novell), and others. I’m privileged to join the LinuxCon faculty, hosting a panel called “Beyond the Hype: The True Cost of Linux and Open Source.”

I’ve become a huge fan of the Linux Foundation. I think it’s doing great development work with Linux (including Moblin), but it’s also doing a great job of growing and coalescing the Linux community. LinuxCon is a great example of this. I’m looking forward to it.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

(Credit:
Fujifilm)

Sometimes, it’s simply too hard to resist quoting the press release: Fujifilm “today unveiled the FinePix Z20fd, a new ultraglam digital camera packed with useful features that let you face it, beam it, blog it, and now roll it with a new MPEG-4 movie-recording mode for the movie-crazed Generation Z.”

Translation: The Z20fd replaces the Z10fd in the pretty-but-not-too-pricey market segment. Its basic specs include 10-megapixel sensor, a slow f/3.7-8.0 35mm-105mm-equivalent (3x) zoom lens and a low-resolution 150,000-pixel 2.5-inch LCD. Some of the more noncorporeal features include Fujifilm staples like Intelligent Flash (dials back the flash and ups the sensitivity to deliver more natural light), 10-face detection, IrSimple wireless image transfer, and 640×480 30fps MPEG-4 movie capture.

Really, though, you buy these cameras ’cause they look pretty without poking a hole in your pocket, not for their exceptional capabilities.

When they ship in March, this cornucopia of colorful cams will cost $199.95.

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InfoWorld just released an excellent “roundtable” series on open source with a range of open-source thought leaders (including me) weighing in on the future of open source, competition for open source, and whether all the open-source infighting actually does more good than harm.

On competition with proprietary software companies, I suggested the following:

For the moment, I just want to see Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, and IBM develop their own vibrant corners of the open source universe. I want them at the table as full participants. This will require them to change some aspects of their business, but I think they’d find them revelatory rather than ruinous. These are some of the smartest companies on the planet. I’d love to see the open source communities they could create, if they but wanted to do so.

Much more interesting to me were Javier Soltero’s comments on whether commercialization of open source is good or bad for projects:

Commercialization creates added pressures, especially for projects that are separate from the companies that provide commercial offerings around an otherwise free project. Frankly, the idea that commercial interests become involved in an OSS [open source software] project causes an allergic reaction to a lot of people. The reaction is mostly based on the idea that the commercial interests will overwhelm the decision-making process of the project.

Realistically, without some amount of accountability, which comes best in the form of commercial interests, open source projects run the risk of becoming largely academic exercises that don’t ship in time and have poor usability. How this accountability is applied into the project is the key factor in whether or not the commercialization will mean more success for the project or not.

Pressures, yes. But commercialization is a net positive for open source. Just look at what commercialization has done for Linux, Apache, etc.

Could open source exist without commercial interests? Of course it could (and did for many years). But a little money is a good thing for open source, so long as the licenses and organizations involved mitigate against undue corporate influence. That’s why I continue to believe the OSI is such an important organization, even if it does nothing more than prevent bad decisions from being made.

$1.32 billion and 11 cents.

Yahoo is projected to generate $1.32 billion in revenue and earn 11 cents a share for the first quarter, according to analysts’ estimates collected by Thomson Financial.

Anything less than that when the company reports its first-quarter results on April 22 could apply greater pressure on Yahoo to accept Microsoft’s unsolicited buyout bid that was initially valued at $31 a share. This especially holds true if no other white knights emerge to make a deal with Yahoo.

One interesting theory posted on Henry Blodget’s Silicon Alley Insider suggests that Microsoft may want to cool its heels until Yahoo reports its first-quarter results. If Yahoo’s quarter falls below Wall Street’s projections, Microsoft could withdraw its bid, let Yahoo’s share price fall back to the teens, wait a bit, then return with a lower bid of $25 a share.

But then again, why wait?

Yahoo could totally blow the quarter, but its share price may not tank because investors still know Microsoft has its bid on the table.

Microsoft could withdraw its bid at any point, before or after Yahoo’s quarterly announcement, and potentially watch Yahoo’s stock fall back to its pre-buyout bid levels.

If Microsoft withdraws its bid before Yahoo’s quarterly results, it will have a sense of the cause-and-effect of its buyout bid and then another reference point of any investor dissatisfaction if Yahoo misses Wall Street’s projections and the stock falls further.

That’s called a one-two punch.

Well, if you go strictly by market capitalization, and look at the top 10 information technology companies, 6 of them are based in Silicon Valley: Cisco Systems, Google, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Oracle. In fact, if you map these company’s headquarters, they’d all be inside a circle with a radius of just 10 miles. Amazing, when you think about it.

And these companies are far from just “headquartered” in Silicon Valley.

Google and Apple are very much centralized from a product and technology development standpoint.

Intel has research-and-development facilities in Oregon, Arizona, and Israel, but a significant amount of its R&D occurs at or near its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters. The same is true of Cisco, though the networking giant owns several large subsidiaries–such as Scientific Atlanta–that are based elsewhere. Likewise for Oracle.

HP is somewhat more diversified, with product development for its Compaq unit in Houston, plus R&D facilities in Idaho, Oregon, and additional cities around the globe. But still, more of its R&D occurs in northern California than anywhere else.

Three of the four companies not based in Silicon Valley have research and development consolidated near their corporate headquarters: Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.; Qualcomm in San Diego; and Nokia in Finland.

IBM, on the other hand, is the most distributed company of the 10, with R&D facilities in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, North Carolina, Texas, Minnesota, and a number of international locations, including London.

What does all this mean? Well, the data’s essentially useless, unless you compare these companies to the same group, say 5 or 10 years ago. Luckily, I’ve got a good memory. It’s not necessarily obvious from the data, but there does appear to be a trend toward more distributed R&D among large companies–if not domestically, then certainly internationally.

Although there are a number of new and growing U.S. technology hubs, none appears to be in a position to unseat Silicon Valley as the tech mecca.

Internationally speaking, China, India, Israel, Japan, and the United Kingdom each have technology development centers with tremendous growth potential. South Korea and Taiwan are nothing to sneeze at, either. Sure, they all have a way to go to match the confluence of resources and talent that Northern California offers. But the trend is there.

And while our qualitative analysis consists only of 10 companies, I do believe that it represents the industry as a whole.

In summary, as information technology penetrates further into the lives of more and more people, it stands to reason that innovation hubs will become more and more geographically distributed, if not also technically specialized.

And someday, a new technology may take root and ultimately supplant electronics as the driver of human innovation. It might be a form of biotechnology, nanotechnology, or something else entirely. In that case, all bets are off.

Updated 5/29/08 12:23 PM - Modification to paragraph on Intel R&D.