Weird ad for wireless

This ad, which is impossible to read (white text on black background being one of the Bad Things in advertising), is a poking-fun, sarcastic kind of thing ad to sell HP notebooks with an AT&T broadband wireless card.

But if you can actually read it (doubtful), you might find some oddness in it, like this:

"Of course, we don’t recommend this, but you could drive through residential neighborhoods to look for homes with Wi-Fi that isn’t encrypted. Tip: sometimes the password is “password”. Be sure to have all your important files on your hard drive. Don’t count on somebody to send you files."

I get the point, but…

Alex Eckelberry

OneCare suite is available online for download

This is a really good product. Microsoft did their homework on this one. I had downloaded and tested this product and it really does help people keep their systems safe and up to date. The features include anti-virus, a decent firewall, anti-spyware, PC tune-up, back-up, restore, and even email, phone and chat tech support, yup, included in the same package at the same price. The OneCare suite is available online for download, and also in most Best Buy stores and a bunch of other retailers as well. A quick Google search (sorry Microsoft) yielded that both CompUSA and MicroCenter have OneCare available for around $50 for a year's subscription. OfficeMax and OfficeDepot did not seem to have it in their search at least, as of this writing.

Veteran security expert Michael St. Neitzel joins Sunbelt Software

Today, I’m really pleased to announce that Michael St. Neitzel, one of the industry’s leading antimalware researchers, has joined Sunbelt Software in the newly created position of vice president, threat research.

Mike is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on malware and its malicious mechanisms, and has authored a number of technical papers and publications, as well as being a noted speaker at industry conferences.

Mike comes to us from FRISK Software, makers of F-Prot Antivirus, where he was a senior antivirus architect and spokesperson on behalf of the company. Prior to FRISK Software, he was a senior virus researcher with ESET s.r.o., where he worked on the Nod32 antivirus product. Previously, he was with Comodo Security, where he managed the team responsible for the Comodo firewall and antivirus products as executive director in Chennai, India.

Michael will be working on our upcoming VIPRE antivirus+antispyware product, where his work will be essential in developing proprietary heuristics and behavioral detection that is so critical in today’s complex malware environment.

Welcome, Michael. We’re thrilled to have you as part of the Sunbelt team.

Office 2007 may be just ducky

Over at ZDnet, Marc Orchant writes about the "Office UI retraining canard." The catchy title aside, Marc states that the new user interface for Office 2007, including the "ribbon" and the newly grouped sections will eventually win users over. Marc goes on to write that the new interface was designed with a non-existent learning curve in mind. Apparently most users will take to the new UI like a flock of (your favorite waterfowl here). I suppose he is right by saying that "the biggest pushback will come from the most knowledgeable users. They have developed habits that will require some adjustment with the new UI." I certainly fall in that category, and I think a lot of people do. All I want is the option to use the new format or that old one. Though I favor the old way (who doesn't) I am starting to see some advantages to the new UI. I may come around. Stay tuned.

Microsoft Corp say to share revenue with Game developers

Microsoft Corp. says it will share with amateur game developers up to 70 percent of the gross revenue generated by games they sell online through the company's upcoming Xbox Live Community Games section.

The company disclosed the financial terms Tuesday at its Gamefest game-technology conference in Seattle. Microsoft had outlined plans for the Community Games initiative earlier this year, without financial details.

When the system launches later this year, people who develop games through Microsoft's XNA Creators Club ($99 annual subscription) will be able to sell them on the Xbox Live Marketplace, after going through a process of peer review.

Microsoft says it will take an additional slice of revenue -- an extra 10 percent to 30 percent -- from games featured at the front of the Community Games store. The company calls it a marketing charge. The idea, according to Microsoft officials, is that the choice placement will result in a higher volume of sales that will more than make up for the extra cut taken by the company.

In terms of pricing, game developers will be able to choose among three levels for their games -- 200, 400 or 800 Microsoft points. (That translates into $2.50, $5 and $10.) Games also will be available for free trial.

The initiative is meant to open a new distribution channel for small game developers and broaden the library of games available for download on Xbox Live beyond the more highly produced games distributed through Xbox Live Arcade.

At a briefing, Microsoft showed content including a coliseum-fighting title, a Japanese dancing game and a word puzzle

Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer says he plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer says he plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the company's unprofitable Internet business. His investors say they want proof he knows what to do with the money.

After walking away from six months of on-again, off-again talks about buying all or part of Yahoo! Inc., owner of the No. 2 Web search engine, Ballmer has left shareholders wondering if he has a plan B.

Microsoft, the biggest software maker, has lost about $90 billion in market value this year as Ballmer vacillated on Yahoo and failed to show how he would crack Google Inc.'s dominance of Internet advertising. Shareholders will look for ideas at a meeting with Ballmer tomorrow, said Kim Caughey, a Fort Pitt Capital Group Inc. analyst in Pittsburgh.

``I'm a little concerned; I'll be honest,'' said Caughey, whose firm manages $1.2 billion and owns Microsoft shares. Ballmer needs to ``put a hot, bright light of clarity on where's all the money going.''

Ballmer, along with Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell and the presidents of Microsoft's three businesses, will address analysts and investors tomorrow at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Spokesman Frank Shaw declined to comment because the information is scheduled for release at the meeting.

Drag on Earnings

The company has spent about $9 billion in the past 2 1/2 years building its Internet business, according to Directions on Microsoft, a research firm in Kirkland, Washington. Microsoft doesn't provide figures.

Liddell said on a conference call after last week's earnings release that spending on the online business, which includes the MSN Web site and Live search engine, will rise by ``several hundreds of millions of dollars'' in the fiscal year that began July 1.

The online business is in a ``period of significant investment'' and will ``be a drag on an otherwise exceptionally good performance'' this year, Liddell said on the July 17 call. Net income rose 42 percent last quarter to $4.3 billion on an 18 percent sales increase.

Microsoft also lowered its full-year earnings forecast. The stock sank 6 percent the next day. It rose 16 cents to $25.80 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday, and is down 28 percent this year.

The online division is Microsoft's smallest with $3.21 billion in sales last year, or 5 percent of the total of $60.4 billion. The business lost $1.23 billion last year, double the previous year's loss, as it hired more people, built computer data centers, and made acquisitions including $6 billion spent on Seattle-based ad company AQuantive Inc.

`Backup Plans'

In May, Ballmer abandoned his bid for all of Yahoo. The acquisition would have tripled Microsoft's share of U.S. online queries. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo rejected a bid of $47.5 billion.

He then attempted to persuade Yahoo to sell its search business. Instead, Yahoo struck a deal to carry ads from Mountain View, California-based Google.

Ballmer next may look at Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit, said Laura Martin, an analyst at Soleil Securities Group Inc. in Los Angeles. ``AOL is more valuable to Microsoft in a world where Yahoo is aligned with Google,'' Martin said in an e-mail.

``It seems like somewhere there's just a whole bunch of backup plans and he's working through all of them,'' said analyst Tony Ursillo at Loomis Sayles & Co. in Boston, which manages more than $135 billion and owns Microsoft shares.

Not Chasing Microsoft

Ballmer should fund a startup company within Microsoft that would have a relatively small budget but creative freedom, Ursillo said.

``It would be nice if they could somehow create a group from scratch there that could tackle this space with some new ingenuity and someone could chase Microsoft for once,'' he said. ``The consistent element throughout that series of `me too' investments has been heavy investment of capital.''

Advertisers in the U.S. will spend $51 billion by 2012 on Internet promotions, according to technology researcher EMarketer Inc. in New York.

Microsoft had 9.2 percent of U.S. searches last month, up from 8.5 percent in May, Internet site tracker ComScore Inc. in Reston, Virginia, said. Google's share fell to 61.5 percent from 61.8 percent, while Yahoo's grew to 20.9 percent from 20.6 percent.

Yahoo Possibility

A deal with Yahoo may still be possible. Yahoo gave billionaire investor Carl Icahn three seats on its 11-member board this week to end a proxy fight before its Aug. 1 annual meeting. Icahn had pressed to replace the Yahoo board and make the sale to Microsoft.

Yahoo's value may be declining, Fort Pitt's Caughey said. Yahoo yesterday said its second-quarter profit fell 18 percent to $131.2 million, or 9 cents a share, as the Internet company spent more to develop new technology.

Some usefull Custom Excel Formulas

I just discovered that if you add a description to a custom excel formula (i.e. a user-defined function, VBA function, or whatever you want to call it) and then cut and paste the VBA code (so as to move it to a different spot in the VBA module for example), the description gets erased!. This can be frustrating if you have a lot of custom formulas created and documented.

By the way, what I mean by a "description" is that after you create the UDF, you go to Tools > Macros > Macros, then enter the name of the formula in the Macro Name: text box. The Options button will magically be enabled, allowing you to edit the description (which of course shows up when you use the Insert > Function feature in Excel - the whole point to wanting to add a description in this manner).

Take Off E-books Information

"The DRM and client issues seem clearly to be Adobe's: atlhough they might arguably exist with alternative eReading systems, that's immaterial to this poor guy's particular experience. But the first three issues are really more with Amazon and its suppliers' etailing infrastructure and DRM rights-offering choices. In fact therein lies a dilemma for infrastructure vendors like Adobe. Apple's vertically-integrated iTunes Store in many ways provides a better end to end experience to users. For example Apple FairPlay [sic] DRM rights are consistent and reasonably simple to understand. Yet, Apple's ecosystem is completely closed and proprietary, and gives users and publishers no choices. In order to create a compelling eBook user experience, must we abandon an open ecosystem, where publishers and users have choices of different kinds of rights and different channels for acquiring content?"

Microsoft practices predatory pricing

I don’t often write pieces lambasting Microsoft. I have close friends who work for the company (incidentally, some of the brightest people I know), my company is a Gold Partner and we’re also in business with Microsoft. And, I am one of those who believe that the computing world has actually been made a better place by Microsoft.

My beef is never with the people. My beef is with a number of strategic decisions that have been made by the company that should scare a lot of people. So please, to my friends at Microsoft, don’t take this personally. This stuff just needs to be said.

It’s bad enough that Microsoft is getting in to all aspects of security. But now they are going to kill their competition through predatory pricing.

What is predatory pricing? From Wikipedia:

Predatory pricing is the practice of a dominant firm selling a product at a loss in order to drive some or all competitors out of the market, or create a barrier to entry into the market for potential new competitors. The other firms must lower their prices in order to compete with the predatory pricer, which causes them to lose money, eventually driving them from the market. The predatory pricer then has fewer competitors or even a monopoly, allowing it to raise prices above what the market would otherwise bear.

We already know that Microsoft loses money on most of its business (it primarily makes money on the operating system). But now we see that Microsoft is endangering the entire security ecosystem with ruthless, Standard Oil-style pricing.

Start with OneCare: It is arguably a security suite, but just for the sake of simplicity, let’s just consider it an antivirus product. OneCare costs $49.95 for three PCs, an average of $16.65 per machine. (I’m going to ignore the fact that Amazon.com is blowing out OneCare at $19.95, or an average of $6.65 per machine—which is even worse — and Microsoft’s offer to its millions of OneCare beta testers all getting it for $19.95 as well.).

Let’s look at their price, versus the market leaders: Symantec and McAfee. Both of these companies have AV products that retail for $39.99. But they also have three-user offerings, at $69.99 (McAfee) and $89.99 (Symantec). Here’s what that looks like on a per-user basis:

	Norton Antivirus	VirusScan
	$30.00	$23.33
OneCare price advantage ($16.66 per user)	-44%	-29%

Incredibly, Microsoft has priced themselves almost 50% below the market leader, and no one has said a peep.

Now, let’s move to the enterprise side, specifically virus protection for Microsoft Exchange. Remember that enterprise sales are the bread and butter of companies like Symantec and Trend. This is where the money is made.

Examine the latest pricing for Microsoft Antigen, the old Sybari product re-branded under Microsoft’s new Foreforont line of security products. We see a per-user pricing for Antigen for Exchange of $.90 per month, per user, for a five-user shop.

The pricing in this case is obfuscated because Microsoft has gone away from the traditional industry model of charging a perpetual license fee and then annual maintenance. Instead, they charge a monthly price per seat. So you would need to multiply the number of months against an expected period of ownership (I’ve used two years for my examples) to do a comparison.

Let’s look at the prices of Antigen against three leading antivirus products for Exchange: Trend ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange, Symantec Mail Security for Exchange and McAfee GroupShield (these are the current market leaders in securing Exchange).

Here is how Antigen costs compared to the other security products, over a two-year period:

	Year 1	Year 2	Total
Trend ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange	$33.0	$13.2	$46.2
Symantec Mail Security for Exchange	$37.0	$20.8	$57.8
McAfee GroupShield	$38.0	$15.2	$53.2
Microsoft Antigen	$10.8	$10.8	$21.6

Or, looking at it another way:

	Trend	Symantec	McAfee
Year 1	$33.0	$37.0	$38.0
Year 2	$13.2	$20.8	$15.2
Total	$46.2	$57.8	$53.2
Antigen price advantage	-53%	-63%	-59%

As we can see here, Microsoft has priced themselves over 60% less than Symantec, an astonishing difference in price. Microsoft has effectively low-balled the entire antivirus industry in one fell swoop. And their product includes five antivirus engines, not just one. This is even a price drop from Antigen’s former pricing (even several years ago, Antigen for Exchange prices started at $27.50 per user for the first year and then went down in volume).

But incredibly, it gets worse! Antigen for Gateways, which is designed to run off the Exchange box, is even less — a mere $.65 per user per month, or $15.60 over two years!

We don’t know what Microsoft plans to price Forefront Client Security, but one can assume from their pricing here, it’s going to be ruthless.

What should be disturbing about of this all is that we very well might see Microsoft owning a majority in the security space. Despite what their PR flacks tell us, they are hell-bent on getting your business. Look at the Forefront website for yourself. These people mean business. Maybe I’m jaded, as I’ve spent most of my career working for companies that got pummeled by Microsoft (Borland, Quarterdeck, etc.).

Stifling innovation? You bet. What venture capitalist will invest in the next great security idea or product? What entrepreneur will start a new company in the security space, given the risks of competing with Microsoft?

And it’s not just startups. For example, after Microsoft announced the acquisition of Giant Company, a senior executive at a major security company told me that they weren’t going to bother coming out with antispyware functionality, since Microsoft had already made that product free. While that company has since changed their mind, it was a chilling conversation.

It’s one thing that Microsoft has destroyed competition in browsers, languages, word processors, spreadsheets, presentation packages, and all the rest. In some cases, the competitors practically asked to be killed (for example, WordPerfect and Lotus both were laughably late in coming out with Windows support).

But it’s another thing to kill competition in the security space. Because the security landscape has changed. There is now a tremendous incentive to hack Windows, because there’s just so much money to be made by the bad guys. It’s free market economics — energy goes where there is a profit. So Vista will get hacked, there will be zero-day attacks, there will be evolving forms of viruses and malware. And Microsoft security products will be targeted. In a world where Microsoft has a hegemony on security, the implications may be far reaching, possibly to our own national security.

So what does the security industry need to do? Well, stopping Redmond in its march for world domination is for Microsoft’s own good. Destroying their own developer ecosystem is the worst possible thing they could do. After all, there’s always someone waiting in the wings to take over. I won’t suggest what I think should be done. But something does need to happen.

Alex Eckelberry

Source - http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com

Windows Vista includes several new fonts

Windows Vista includes several new fonts based on ClearType that can be used on Windows XP as well as Macs. These beautiful typefaces were created especially for improving the on-screen reading experience in Vista.

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't provide a direct way to download these fonts without buying Windows Vista