30 years of personal computer market share figures

While pondering over the debate on 100$ computer - views against by Intel and a set of counter arguments, courtesy of James Seng, came across this excellent article on the recapping the thirty year of personal computers. The story of the personal computer is a fascinating tale, it is ever exciting to read. As Jeremy points out, When you step back and look at the big picture, the overall dominance of the PC becomes clear. In fact it wasn't until 1986 that the PC platform first surpassed 50% market share and that was more than a decade after the first personal computer was sold. Bill Gates then recalled that many mainframe computers had spawned work-alike clones in the past. It was this foresight that enabled him to get IBM to agree to a contract whereby Microsoft could license MS-DOS to third parties. IBM, thinking in mainframe timelines and assuming that clones would be perpetually years behind the originals, thought nothing of this stipulation. They were only concerned with getting the lowest possible flat rate for MS-DOS (which they mistakenly called PC-DOS) in the first place. A combination of extreme foresight and even better luck enabled Microsoft's rise to dominance along with the PC platform. A handful of geeks and enthusiasts turned that dream into reality, and today personal computers are everywhere. Over 173 million computers were sold in 2004, and the figures are expected to continue to rise, as falling prices enable people all over the world to enjoy the benefits of personal computing. A well researched and compiled article - must read for all those tracking, using and working on emerging technologies. Don't miss the lovely chart om market shares of various vendors - in fact it is a good indicator of how the technology itself has evolved and likely to shape up in future.

Bruce Perens' Forecasts for 2006

Bruce Perens makes a set of forecast for 2006. With increase interest in opensource showing up and with developments like this taking place - it is certainy worth watching what Bruce perens has to say - with my comments added.

1. Java begins its decline as an Enterprise Platform : As he sees it,Java falls flat in one critical area: time-to market. Upstart web platforms like Ruby on Rails have shown that you can use your development time – resulting in scalabilty - add cheap hardware instead of expensive time. (My View : Nope .. I do not see an easy switch from Java to a new platform happening in 2006 in the enterprise space - switching costs and associated change management could be minboggling)
2. Native Linux APIs gain ground as a Cellular Applications Platform
Java's also the Cell phone industry's answer to portability, but not to performance. The advent of Linux and Open Source GUIs in feature phones, and standardization projects like those run by OSDL and Free Standards Group, will begin to be noted in 2006 (My view : I do not see this to happen wholesome but in a very limited way could happen)
3. Cellular Carriers are Just Carriers : Like ISP’s tried in the early days to provide content and failed ,cellular carriers dream of value-added content, served through feature phones, as a revenue enhancer may also meet the same fate. Content will always come from content experts/general media. (My view : Fully agree)
4. Trouble ahead for PHP :PHP has become the BASIC of web application design, used primarily by designers without too much computer science background. The platform hasn't taken well to multiprocessing, and is doing poorly enough from a security standpoint While organizations invested in PHP will band-aid their existing code, new projects will move to other platforms, with designers more cognizant of both software engineering and application security. (My view : Partially agree).

Read his full post to look at his other predictions.

Google - Gtalk API

The pace at which things move in the online world is indeed amazing.Google has just released a set of components called Libjingle that allow third party applications to interact with Google Talk. The components, which include some source code, are being released under a very liberal berkely style license allowing for free incorporation into commercial and non-commercial software. Google says in its API site that this is released as part of its ongoing commitment to promoting consumer choice and interoperability in Internet-based real-time-communications. This can be freely incorporate into software and distributed without any restrictions. There are several general purpose components in the library such as the P2P stack which can be used to build a variety of communication and collaboration applications. A summary of the individual components of the library reads like this:
* base - Low-level portable utility functions.
* p2p - The p2p stack, including base p2p functionality and client hooks into XMPP.
* session - Phone call signaling.
* third_party - Non-Google components required for some functionality.
* xmllite - XML parser.
* xmpp - XMPP engine.
Google is now training its guns at Skype,forcing them to release their API’s. While Skype clerly provides for integration with the Skype client, Google has gone far beyond this, allowing integration with the Google Talk’s VOIP network. Google Google's Philosophy as seen here needs commendation : it says that you should have a choice in how you communicate with your friends, and it’s committed to upholding this idea of user choice for Google Talk. Today, with instant communications, you can't talk to your contacts or buddies in one service while using another service and makes an open statement that it wants to work with other willing service providers to enable their users to communicate directly with Google Talk users. Good move- probably as I see it next to google search and Gmail this may have the maximum number of profiled community members. Good move- am an instant convert to using GoogleTalk.

Google, IBM team on deep-research tool

IBM and Google Inc. are collaborating to make it easier for office workers not only to search for local documents and personal e-mail but also to delve deep into corporate databases, the companies announced today.

IBM is linking its OmniFind corporate search system with Google's free desktop search for business to make it easier for users to locate information that's often locked up in many separate systems throughout an organization.

"Getting these two products together makes sense for both of us," said David Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise business unit. "If you want to have a good corporate search product, you have to have desktop search," he said.

Google wins IBM's endorsement among corporate technical managers for its desktop search product, and IBM gives corporate information workers an already popular entry point into back-office databases through Google's search.

Searchable data ranges from e-mail to computer files to blog postings to corporate repositories of data, images, audio or video, Prial said. Much of this isn't available using public Web search tools. Typically, it's hard to reach inside a company except by trawling through many different programs.

"There is a lot of information that passively sits inside an enterprise," said Jon Prial, IBM's vice president of content management. "Our intention is to provide more of an active service that gives a single view of all that information."

No money is changing hands in the partnership between IBM and the leader in Web search. But coming just weeks after a software and research pact by Google and Sun Microsystems Inc. (see "Google, Sun to bring StarOffice to Web"), the IBM deal enlists yet another potential ally as Google increasingly faces off with rival Microsoft Corp. on PC desktops.

Prial downplayed any grand strategy in IBM's dealings with Google, but he said the collaboration is part of a broader push IBM calls "information as a service" that the company plans to make more explicit over the coming months.

Users of IBM's WebSphere integration software would have access to information stored inside rival business databases and content management systems, not just those from IBM.

"There's a lot of raw data inside an organization -- as much as 80% is unstructured, and something has to happen to make it into information," Forrester analyst Barry Murphy said of data forgotten on employee hard disks or other places.

IBM customers can use the Google/IBM search combination by buying IBM products and services and building their own in-house system, or they can have IBM create a prepackaged system tailored to the company's industry, IBM said. The company's first custom-built system, IBM Crime Information Warehouse, aims to give government and police agencies fast access to crime statistics, as well as incident and arrest reports, in a single view to help them discern crime patterns.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google normally eschews big, formal alliances with corporate technology suppliers such as IBM. That has been the traditional route that less-established software suppliers have used to win corporate acceptance of their products. Instead, Google's strategy is to use its popularity with consumers at home to slip into offices by relying on the actions of millions of employees to each download its tools.

"Information technology used at work has been evolving much more slowly than among consumers," Girouard said. "We think there is a great opportunity [for our consumer users] to bring products to the workplace that are Google-like."

courtesy : www.computerworld.com
http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/data/story/0,10801,105793,00.html?source=x06

Mobile-blogging poised to explode

When Merriam-Webster compiled a list of the most searched words of 2004, the word 'blog' (short for weblog) topped the charts.

However, blogging's younger sibling, the mobile-blog, is rapidly becoming one of the most popular online phenomenon worldwide. Mobile-blogging, or moblogging - basically, using camera phones to post pictures and text on a weblog - is captivating thousands of new converts every week from Atlanta to Zagreb.

A few numbers tell you why. More camera phones are sold than digital cameras, with one American research firm predicting global sales to rise from 150 million in 2003 to 650 million by 2008.

Little wonder the user base of popular moblog sites such as Text America (latest available figure: 500,000), Flickr (250,000), Yafro (100,000), Buzznet (20,000) and Mobog (16,000) is growing exponentially. The big daddy of them all, MSN Spaces, has more than 1.5 million users, but not all of them are mobloggers.

So what's the buzz all about? Well, moblogging provides a whole new dimension to the concept of a personal diary by providing the immediacy and intimacy of pictures taken anywhere, at any time. So, if you are inspired at your favourite local watering hole or on a road trip, you won't have to wait until you get back to your desktop to share your visuals with the world.

Not surprisingly, company after company has been coming out with applications and services to tap into what they think is a big blogosphere (and, perhaps, with the aim to also push other services such as MMS). But moblogging services from telcos lack the insight into blogging to actually make them useful tools.

Mobile-blogging tools enable one to post images, videos or text to a web location, but do little to engender the conversations that characterise blogs.

Most 20-40 year-olds who remain hooked to their camera phones or communicators use their GPRS for a quick look at their inboxes or maybe send a quick message or two. The reason why they have steered clear of moblogging: service providers and telco operators do not provide ease of use.

courtesy : rediff.com
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/nov/04spec.htm

4G Web Strategy

The web technology is indeed undergoing major transformation. Around the world, I definitely see a major overdrive by enterprises to leverage web technology in multiple ways. David Coe writes about the revolutionary advances into the fourth generation websites. He characterizes the various generation websites as:



1G - welcome to first generation websites - it’s 1994 and big brother just bought a modem. Evolution is wonderful and soon we’re experimenting with more brand new tools - “Hey look dude - it’s like a word processor - but for the web!”.

It’s 1999…and this is the world of 2G websites - a new millennium - is there a new web model?… all of a sudden you, me, and everyone we know is spending many, many, many $$$$s online.

Most marketing departments are disenfranchised from the web experience by the tyranny of their IT departments - the online suffragettes of their generation. This lack of engagement allows an undercurrent of resentment - fragmented sales and marketing — fragmented web solutions. This is a 3G website world!

“Traditional” website structure just doesn’t work any more - have a look at some sitemaps and the chances are it’ll look like a “typical” organizational chart. Businesses are getting leaner — people are getting multi-skilled. Multi-tasking 24/7 is the norm. The work/life balance starts to erode in the name of flexibility and freedom. Websites don’t work with “old skool” navigational hierarchy any more. But let’s not just make them flatter. Tourists bring back souvenirs — explorers bring home ‘stories’. Content is king. Content is everything. Yet most sites still lack contentf the stuff that ensures that people will come back time and time again — to re-engage with your site. Websites are like ogres — they have layers Very Interesting indeed.Must read for all interested.