What is the video “about”? Well, about some of trends guiding open source into more enterprises, but mostly about the great people I know in the open-source (mostly business) community. The best thing about open source is the exceptional crowd with which I get to run.

Challengers of Open Source: Music video

I know I missed some in this video - I simply couldn’t find good photos or, if I did, they inexplicably didn’t work in the video when converted (such was the case with Nat Friedman’s that I pulled from Facebook).

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Microsoft could learn a lesson from a different explorer to the Americas, Hernan Cortez, whose policy was to “burn the boats.” It’s understandable that Microsoft would cling to its profitable past. That past churns out billions of dollars in profits each quarter. Who wouldn’t want that?

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By contrast, Microsoft has long been a software engineering culture in which huge projects like
Windows Vista are developed and tested by teams of hundreds, and whose completion time is measured in a large fraction of decades.

Steve Ballmer recently opined that for Microsoft to adopt open source would mean that it couldn’t give away “free soda” to employees. But it is this very principle of free that drives the web, too:

Is a combination of the two going to work? I think increasingly highly of Yahoo! but it’s Microsoft’s intransigence toward new ideas that offers the most resistance to the deal working.

There are also questions about whether Yahoo! is the ideal teacher for Microsoft, as The Guardian notes:

In Silicon Valley today, software is increasingly delivered as a Web service, it is often put together by teams of programmers who might be scattered on three continents, it’s often free to users, and Web surfers usually do the testing soon after the first prototype is complete.

But Microsoft is completely irrelevant in the 21st Century of software. If it wants to return to its money-minting exercise, it needs to stop seeking to slap a new face on old businesses and instead build new businesses with new people and new business models. Easier said than done, but who said it should be easy to make billions?

Juan Ponce de Leon came to the Americas in 1513 searching for the fountain of youth. He never found it, but he apparently left behind the belief that old bones can be rejuvenated, as Microsoft seems to be chasing th same elixir with its proposed acquisition of Yahoo!.

While there are clues that pockets within Microsoft are embracing the web and its promise, Microsoft is currently $80 billion into its quest for the Yahoo! Botox with little to suggest that the company is truly read to embrace what is most disruptive - and most successful - about Yahoo!.

Loopt’s Altman gave Android credit for being more open and capable of running background processes. Jason Devitt of Skydeck gave RIM (Blackberry) props for getting email right and noted that Android has serious challenges ahead. “The biggest challenge for Android is that it is totally dependent on hardware manufacturers and for the carriers to deliver,” he said. This is distinct from the iPhone and Blackberry approaches, in which the devices are completely controlled by Apple and RIM, respectively. Developers are taking a wait-and-see approach to Android, which lacks any user base currently.

David Hornik and Tom Conrad

Andreas Weigend, former chief scientist, Amazon

David Rivas, Nokia, Vice President of Technology Management for S60 Software

David Hornik, partner, August Capital

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt

Mary Ann Cotter, CEO Cooking Capsules

Greg Yardley, CEO of Pinch Media CEO

Richard Wong, partner at Accel

Gannon Hall, CMO of Kyte

Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob

If you weren’t aware, a war–more like a tug-of-war–is happening in the mobile space. The
iPhone is quickly rising as the development platform to beat, despite its paltry share of market versus Nokia (Symbian), Java BREW, Blackberry and Microsoft Mobile. In addition, Google’s fledgling open-source Android platform is also a challenger to the incumbents.

Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous

Tom Conrad, CTO of music service Pandora, said that the iPhone is fundamentally better for streaming devices and as a multifunction device appeals to consumers in different ways than other phones. Regarding Google’s Android platform, Conrad said, “I need Android like I need a hole in the head. The last thing I need from a technology standpoint is a platform that sits on top of buggy firmware, with hundreds of phone manufacturers and different screens.”

Tom Conrad, CTO Pandora

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

Walt Doyle, CEO Ulocate

Guy Ben-Artzi, Founder of Real Dice and CEO of Mytopia

Mike Arrington, Bart Decrem, Jed Stremel and David Rivas debate iPhone vs. Nokia Symbian and other topics.

John Faith , GM and VP of Mobile for MySpace

The idea that the iPhone has invented or is reinventing the mobile Web is an overstatement, according to David Rivas, Nokia, vice president of Technology Management for S60 Software, citing Japan and Korea as far ahead of the U.S. in mobile usage. “The idea that there wasn’t a mobile before the iPhone is absurd,” Rivas said. He also defended Nokia’s recently open-sourced S60 platform, saying that it has applications similar to what are available on the iPhone. On the other hand, it doesn’t have the buzz or browser of the iPhone, but Nokia produces a phone every 14 seconds, garnering 60 percent of the market. Rivas was asked about a merging of Symbian and Android, and responded that there are no such plans.

But the iPhone is not the universal answer from a business perspective. Loopt CEO Sam Altman said his strategy is choose a single platform (the iPhone) and if a feature becomes popular bring it to other platforms.

Jed Stremel, Director of Mobile at Facebook

Mike Rowehl, chief architect, SkyFire

At a Mobile Web Wars Roundtable held by TechCrunch more than 20 mobile wonks discussed that state of mobile platforms (see the list of participants below). The purpose of the roundtable was to determine which mobile platform is best for developers. The iPhone has set a new standard for smartphones and most importantly developers are fawning over it, and iPhone users appear to be far more active users than those on other phone platforms. In the first few weeks of iPhone 3G more than 30 million applications have been downloaded.

Marc Davis, chief scientist, Yahoo mobile group

Mobile Platform War participants:

Jason Devitt, CEO of Skydeck

But the iPhone doesn’t have a sizable market yet, compared to Facebook or Windows, Hornik said. “It’s not venture scale,” he said. Venture capitalist Richard Wong of Accel made the case that there aren’t any developers creating applications just for the iPhone today. “It’s about finding the largest addressable audience,” said Walt Doyle, CEO of uLocate. Yahoo supports everything under the mobile sun and reaches 600 million devices with its mobile services, according to Marc Davis, chief scientist for Yahoo’s mobile group.

Tatsuki Tomita, SVP of Consumer Product, Opera

Another iPhone advantage is that it takes the iterative model of Web development and extends it to the mobile client, said Jed Stremel, director of mobile at Facebook.

David Hornik of August Capital said that he is excited about iPhone because thousands of applications were distributed after it launched–living proof of the viability of the platform. Like Facebook applications, VCs see some potential in funding in iPhone developers. Having the iPhone app store and not having to go through the carriers to access applications is a bonus for distribution. Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob, said the value of ads on the iPhone served by his company is three times other platforms.

Archos GPS In-car Holder

The Archos GPS In-Car Holder will work with all models of the 605 Wi-Fi and has an expected shipping date of sometime in May. Pricing starts at $129.99 or you can get a bundle package (30GB Archos 605 WiFi + GPS In-Car Holder) for $399.99.

(Credit:
Archos)

CNET News.com’s Elinor Mills contributed to this report.

Update 11:00 a.m. PT: Representatives from Yahoo and Microsoft on Saturday declined to comment on the report.

The Journal says that Yahoo will outline its position in a letter to Microsoft’s board on Monday.

Yahoo’s board has decided Microsoft’s $31-per-share offer “massively undervalues” the company, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Yahoo is expected to formally reject Microsoft’s offer, the Journal reported.

But, if Yahoo does want to play hardball, it has bolstered its position. The report says that Yahoo has also adopted a so-called poison pill that means that the Internet company could force Microsoft into a proxy fight to replace the board before getting Yahoo shareholders to vote on its existing offer.

The Times report, citing sources, noted Microsoft not only paid $800 million to acquire Tellme Networks but spent an additional $100 million on employee retention perks–or an average of $300,000 per employees for the 330-member workforce.

The Internet search pioneer has run both a Microsoft buyout scenario and a Google outsourcing deal through its antitrust viewfinder, according to sources who spoke with CNET News.com.

And while the Journal report notes that some view a Yahoo-Google outsourcing agreement, beyond the two-week test, as “mere gamesmanship” given potential antitrust issues it could pose, it may, nonetheless, seem a valid alternative to those weighing their options at Yahoo.

The WSJ cited people familiar with the matter who said that a deal between Yahoo and Google is increasingly likely given the status of the testing. The report also notes that such an outsourcing deal could give Yahoo a boost in its efforts to spur Microsoft into increasing its unsolicited buyout bid for the Internet search pioneer.

News.com’s Desiree Everts contributed to this report.

Yahoo may need such help if Microsoft is concerned about the additional costs it may have to bear to retain Yahoo employees.

That reported truce arose following rapid-fire reports last week of potential additional buyers hovering nearby. The often-reported Time Warner-AOL suitor may find traction in teaming up with Google to enter into a Yahoo deal, while speculation surfaced that Microsoft and News Corp. are toying with the notion of potentially making a joint bid for Yahoo.

Yahoo, meanwhile, has invested millions of dollars in its own search technology, called Panama, so a partnership with Google would be a serious departure from its previous efforts–though it would not necessarily mean that the Internet company is completely killing off its entire ad infrastructure.

A report in the New York Times noted “the hidden cost of ‘flight insurance’ against employee defections may also be a reason Microsoft has resisted raising its bid.”

One potential take-away from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times stories is negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft may be hitting a rough patch, after media reports surfaced last Friday suggesting the two companies may try negotiating again this week.

Last week, Yahoo announced it would begin a limited test of using Google to deliver some search advertising. Microsoft immediately came back with a stern warning that such a partnership would hurt competition.

And, in the Journal report, it cites sources as saying that even if Yahoo pursued an outsourcing partnership with Google, it would not necessarily nix a Microsoft deal. The report notes Yahoo, for example, could step away from its Google fling, should it hitch up with Microsoft.

So if you get a defective DTV converter box–or even if you don’t like the one you bought–you can take it back for another one, depending on the store’s return policy. Of course, the best option to make sure you get a good box the first time, and we’ve already done a comparison of a few DTV converter boxes on the market. And if you’re willing to geek out a little bit, you can also check out Wikipedia’s giant chart of converter box info (normal caveats about Wikipedia apply).

But what happens if you get your DTV converter box back and it’s broken? While you might think that note means that DTV converter boxes can’t be returned, that’s not the case. From the government’s DTV converter box FAQ:

If you buy GE's lackluster DTV converter box, are you stuck with it?

To be honest, that’s not much of a surprise when you consider how the coupon program actually works. If consumers were able to get credit or cash for returned DTV converter boxes, unscrupulous buyers could return a DTV converter box then use the credit to purchase any piece of electronics they wanted–which is definitely not the spirit of the coupon program.

IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING REFUNDS: You will not be able to receive cash or credit for the coupon amount, but you can receive cash or credit for any amount you paid out of pocket, if the store policy permits.

More DTV transition resources
CNET’s Quick guide to the DTV transition
Don’t buy a portable TV this year
Don’t sign up for your $40 DTV converter box coupon–yet
DTV Coupon Program

We finally got one of our government-issued DTV converter box coupons in the mail, and one of the notices on the accompanying information sheet caught our eye:

(Credit:
CNET)

I haven’t seen any good benchmarking comparisons between these two chips. Intel published some selected benchmarks at IDF, but not many, and it isn’t clear to me what aspects of chip performance were being stressed.

Any given microprocessor core architecture, like the Nehalem architecture underlying these new parts, has a certain typical complexity expressed in terms of a number of equivalent gate delays. The clock period has to be long enough to accommodate all of these gate delays.

In his IDF session announcing these parts, Intel Vice President Mooly Eden said the best of these parts, the 2GHz Core i7-920XM Extreme Edition, is “the fastest quad-core processor, the fastest dual-core processor, and the fastest single-core processor”– all in one chip.

In the ideal case, where just one core is running, Turbo Boost can increase the clock rate on that core from the chip’s rated speed of 2GHz to 3.2GHz–that’s like getting a chip eight speed grades faster than what you paid for. (Speed grades, or “bins” in the parlance of semiconductor manufacturing, usually go up in steps of around 10 percent to 20 percent. The Core 2 Mobile processor P series parts have speeds of 2.26, 2.4, 2.53, 2.66, and 2.8GHz. The T series extends this range to 2.93 and 3.06GHz, so by this measurement, 3.2GHz would be about eight steps above 2GHz.)

The new “Clarksfield” Core i7 Mobile processors introduced at the Intel Developer Forum last week are certainly very impressive. They’re huge high-performance quad-core chips with Hyper-Threading, support for two channels of DDR3-1333 DRAM, and an on-die PCI Express controller for the fastest possible connection to discrete graphics chips.

The 820QM is nominally rated at 1.73GHz with a peak Turbo Boost speed of 3.06GHz, which is really so close to the 2.0/3.2GHz figures of the 920XM that the 820QM is a better deal for every use of a laptop except for gaining bragging rights. At 1.6/2.8GHz, with all the same basic features (Hyper-Threading, 8M of L3 cache, DDR3-1333 DRAM, etc.), the 720QM is the best deal of all, and I expect it to be very popular.

The Core i7-920XM Extreme Edition processor is priced at $1,054 in 1,000-unit quantities, so I think most of us will not be shopping for that particular model. Intel also introduced the Core i7-820QM for $546 and the 720QM for just $364. These two parts have a slightly lower TDP rating of 45W and lower clock speeds to match.

Servers also provide an opportunity for an apparently paradoxical design optimization. By adjusting process parameters to reduce Jasper Forest’s peak clock speed, Intel can actually deliver higher effective performance. The tweaks for slower transistors also reduce leakage currents and thus overall power consumption, making it easier to run all the cores at a slightly high speed all the time. If Intel offers a 55W server processor from this chip design, it could actually run at a higher clock speed than the 2GHz rating of the 920XM at the small cost of not supporting 3.2GHz for single-core Turbo Boost.

The quad-core mode of Turbo Boost is a little more subtle; it works when the four cores aren’t running a worst-case workload–for example, integer-heavy processing, since it’s generally floating-point calculations that consume the most power–so they aren’t bumping into the TDP limit. Turbo Boost can increase the frequency of all four cores until they’re running as fast as they can for the current workload.

(Credit:
Intel)

But for dual-core and single-core performance, the 920XM should be much faster than its predecessor, combining the superior Nehalem architecture with the higher clock speeds enabled by Turbo Boost. The QX9300 has a simpler feature called Dynamic Acceleration Technology, but its effect is limited to only about one speed grade, roughly 10 percent. In most dual-core cases, and I think in all single-core cases, the 920XM will be much faster for the same power consumption.

The key to this dramatic claim is a feature called Turbo Boost technology. Basically, if the current application workload isn’t keeping all four cores fully busy and pushing right up against the chip’s TDP (Thermal Design Power) limit, Turbo Boost can increase the clock speed of each core individually to get more performance out of the chip.

As I explained in my previous post (see “Intel’s Lynnfield mysteries solved”), this same chip design will also be used in desktops and servers, where Intel uses the code names “Lynnfield” and “Jasper Forest” respectively.

For the 920XM, that slowdown worked out to 2GHz, and that’s why the chip is rated at that speed.

Intel VP Mooly Eden shows off the new Core i7 Mobile processor and its companion I/O controller at the Intel Developer Forum.

Any given process technology, like Intel’s 45nm “P1266″ technology, has its own characteristics. These can be tweaked somewhat to optimize for higher speed, higher yield, lower power consumption, higher transistor density, etc., but generally a company like Intel has just one recipe for high-performance microprocessors like the Core i7.

In a laptop, the potential for quad-core 3.2GHz operation just can’t be realized. Intel selected the 55W TDP specification for the 920XM because that’s a practical limit for a laptop processor. Combine that number with the rest of the chipset, the memory, a high-end graphics chip, and a big high-resolution LCD panel, and the whole laptop might be consuming 80W-100W when running all-out.

If the 920XM were configured to run all of its cores at 3.2GHz, I estimate it would consume at least 110W of power for the CPU alone–completely untenable in a mainstream laptop. (Though it’s true that some original equipment manufacturers make laptops using desktop Nehalem processors; they’re just huge, heavy, and hot.)

Eden said that the Turbo Boost controller samples the current power consumption and chip temperature 200 times per second and makes whatever adjustments are necessary. Of course, if Windows isn’t asking for more performance, Turbo Boost doesn’t deliver it.

That’s how Intel wants everyone to think of Turbo Boost, but it isn’t really the natural way. To explain why, I’ll have to digress briefly and describe how chips are designed and built.

It’s easy to see how this works when just one or two cores are being actively used; whatever power the other two or three cores would have consumed can be redirected over to the active cores, allowing them to run at higher speeds.

Intel’s new ‘Clarksfield’ Core i7 Mobile processor is a big hunk of silicon–296 square mm with a carrier 37.5mm on a side.

For the Core i7-920XM, that maximum speed bin is 3.2GHz, not the 2GHz value which is marked on the part. In principle, the 920XM could run all of its cores at 3.2GHz all the time if enough power was available and if the heat sink could keep the chip cool. (This is why Turbo Boost isn’t like consumer overclocking: the chip is operating within its design specifications at all times.)

It’s worth looking at the previous Extreme Edition mobile processor, the Core 2 Extreme QX9300, which is a quad-core chip that can run all four cores continuously at 2.53 GHz. In spite of the QX9300’s faster clock speed, there will still be many situations where the 920XM is faster on quad-core workloads because of the newer Nehalem microarchitecture, which usually gets more work done per clock period.

In desktops, there’s room for the huge heat sinks and fans needed to keep the chip cool, so Intel can mark these chips with faster clock speeds… but the maximum clock rate will still be similar, so the benefits of Turbo Boost will be smaller. In servers, sustained quad-core throughput is the most important thing, so Turbo Boost may not be supported at all; if present, it’ll be a relatively minor aspect of the chip’s real-world performance.

The combination of the gate delays in the logical design of a chip with the physical transistor and interconnect performance figures for a process determines a maximum clock speed for that chip on that process. As chips are manufactured, they’re tested for functionality and speed against various standards like power consumption and temperature rating; each speed grade ends up with its own part number, like “920XM” for the fastest Core i7 Mobile chips.

So Intel calculated how much it has to slow down the 920XM in order to meet the industry-standard definition of TDP, which amounts to a worst-case real-world workload running on all four cores. (Maximum power is defined in terms of a worst-case synthetic “power virus,” but since real applications aren’t that brutal in their processing demands, maximum power is only of interest to chip and system designers.)

(Credit:
Intel)

Over the past year or so, IBM has been revamping its Systems and Technology Group (STG) organization in a major way.

Two aspects of the STG reorg are of particular interest here.

This is both a major midrange product announcement and the final (or, at least, as final as such things ever are) coming together of a complex organizational and product integration task that’s been going on for years.

The first is the customer aspect. This announcement reflects its venue; COMMON is IBM’s midrange user group–which at IBM historically more or less equated to System i (and its iSeries and AS/400 predecessors). However, this announcement pulls in multiple product threads–including blades. This reflects how the client-facing part of the new STG organization now breaks down by customer type, rather than technology base. STG’s Business Systems Group (BSG) is chartered with selling to the midmarket–across product groups. This is essentially a return to the older IBM sales model that was subsequently replaced by a more specialist-led approach.

IBM Power 520 Express is an entry-level server with up to four Power6 cores. The Power 520 Express is available in AIX, Linux, and i editions. IBM Power 550 Express is a midrange server with up to eight Power6 cores. The Power 550 is also available in AIX, Linux, and i editions.

Midwinter trips to AS/400 headquarters were not eagerly sought! It was a competitor to low-end and midrange minicomputers from the likes of Digital Equipment and Wang Labs.

We see those changes reflected in a major way with IBM’s Power systems announcement Wednesday at its COMMON User Group Conference in Nashville.

System p, on the other hand, was long called the RS/6000 and had its home base in Austin, Texas. Its competition was other RISC-based servers running Unix such as those from Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. Especially given that the “old IBM’s” product divisions could be best described (however uncharitably) as warring fiefdoms, there was little sharing of technology or anything else between them.

What this means is that there’s now one common set of system models that can run AIX, i, or Linux operating systems–or a combination thereof using the integrated server virtualization features that fall under the PowerVM umbrella. The specific server models covered in this announcement are:

There’s also an i Edition Express for BladeCenter S. This basically backfills i support to previously announced Power blades in the SMB-oriented version of its BladeCenter and also adds the JS12, a new single-socket blade.

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The announcement also reflects changes to the product side of the reorganization. Looking back, System i and System p (to use the product line names in use prior to this announcement), sprang from wholly different roots. System i, long known as the AS/400 (although its lineage actually goes back further to the System/36 and System/38), was long an independent thread of IBM systems development based in Rochester, Minn.

Back in your worksheet, select the cell containing the new formula, and change the formula value you noted in step 3 to the row containing the data you’re looking for. To display the value of another row in that column, simply change the value again. In my music library example, I first searched for the value “Bessie” to show the number of songs recorded by Bessie Smith, and then I changed that value to “Emmylou” to display the number of songs in my library recorded by Emmylou Harris.

Step 1 of Microsoft Excel's Lookup Wizard shows the cell range it will search.

To see if you have the Lookup Wizard installed in Excel 2003, click Tools and look for a Lookup option, probably at the bottom of the menu. In Excel 2007, click the Formulas tab and look to the far right for a Lookup option in the Solutions section of the ribbon. If the wizard isn’t there, load it in Excel 2003 by clicking Tools > Add-Ins > Lookup Wizard > OK > Yes, or in Excel 2007 by selecting the Office button, and clicking Excel Options > Add-Ins > Lookup Wizard > Go > Lookup Wizard > OK > Yes. You may be asked to insert your Office install CD to complete the installation. When the dialog box closes, you should have a Lookup option on your Tools menu in Excel 2003, or a Lookup button in the Solutions section at the far right under Excel 2007’s Formulas tab.

Microsoft Excel can handle data tables with hundreds or even thousands of rows and columns. That’s great, unless you’re trying to find a specific cell’s value, which could have you scrolling up and down, left and right looking for that needle of data in a haystack of cells. If your table is formatted correctly, you can use Excel’s Lookup Wizard to display the data in a cell automatically.

You now have a mini-worksheet search engine, but there’s more you can do with the wizard, such as using it to find a range of cell values, or to display the values of two cells that are related in some way (by selecting the Copy the formula and lookup values option in step 3 of the wizard). I’ll describe other lookup tricks in a future post.

To find a cell’s data, select the cell range you want to search, including the table headers, and click Tools > Lookup in Excel 2003, or click the aforementioned Lookup button in the Solutions area under the Formulas tab in Excel 2007. In step 1 of the 4-step wizard, verify that the range is correct, and click Next.

Tomorrow: super productivity-enhancing
Firefox extensions.

Note that your table can’t have any empty cells, and it must have headings. (Additionally, if you use the wizard to find a range of values, the rows must be sorted; see below for more on searching for value ranges.)

Click in the cell you want the data you're searching for to appear, and choose Finish.

Select the column containing the cell data you're looking for in step 2 of the Lookup Wizard.

Choose the column containing the value you seek in the drop-down menu at the top of the wizard’s second step, and note the value in the row field at the bottom of the dialog box, but don’t change it. Click Next to move on to step 3. Choose Copy just the formula to a single cell, and click Next to open the fourth and last step of the wizard. Now click inside the empty text field of the last dialog box, then click the cell in the worksheet you want the data you’re searching for to appear in, and choose Finish.

Choose Copy just the formula to a single cell, and click Next.