An interview of Bill Gates in News.com.

server-equal-service

The idea that the computing industry can simplify its offerings dramatically by having this server-equals-service approach, and having richer services, absolutely I believe in that, and we need to be at the forefront of that. The idea that management can be more automatic and software updating can be more automatic, state-replication more automatic–there are some big things here that can drive the industry forward. They are very complex, because we have to make things very reliable and very secure if you are going to do this. It’s just now that we have the maturity of XML and the Web Services protocols that we can start to do (this).

Positioning difference between Google and Microsoft

So Google is not offering development capabilities yet. Of course, I expect they will. But they’re not in that game at all today. In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world’s information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world’s information. It’s a slightly different approach, based on the platformization of all of our capabilities and not thinking of ourselves as the organizer.

Information at our fingertips?

Do we have information at your fingertips today? No. Do we have a lot more than we had in the year 2000? A huge amount more. We’re getting decent Web search, we’re getting RSS. So software as a service has been moving along. We needed the Internet. We needed low-cost connectivity. We needed XML. The scale economics of doing large server farms…you can do those and do those well.

Free and commercial software

The industry will always be a mix of free and commercial software. So there will be a balance between those. I think that we are going to have a lot of both. There are some zealots that think there should be no software jobs, that we should all, like, cut hair during the day and write code at night.

We have already seen some screenshots of MS Word, Excel. Powerpoint and Access, in their new version 12. Laurent wanted to see the new Outlook look&feel.; Dragos found them ;-) Have a look below!

Microsoft Outlook 12

Thanx dragos

[via BetaNews]

Version 1.3 available, not in beta anymore.

Foxit PDF Reader is a reader for PDF (eBook) documents. You can view and print PDF documents with it. This program is small (the download size less than 1MB), and does not require installation.

Latest Changes:

• Installer for Foxit Reader available
• Changed visual design for most of our UI elements: icon, About box, toolbar buttons, etc
• Fixed most of the bugs reported by users during beta phase of version 1.3. Including printing crash problems, errors on Windows 9x platforms, etc

As already explained in one of my post in July, we were invited by Mr. Boydak (in German) at the third IT Strategie Forum to talk about innovation and the eCenter.

About 40 IT Executives from different industries were present, some very nice and refreshing talks, and good contacts.

The Forum took place at the Hotel Panorama, near Zurich. Marvelous landscape and view on the lake of Zurich!

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I know, I know, you have *all* already tested the new Google’s service ;-) The end of Technorati?

This functionality, in case you haven’t seen it:

Can I subscribe to search results?

Yes. At the bottom of each page of search results you can find several links, offering the top 10 or 100 results as either Atom or RSS feeds. Just grab the links from here and subscribe to them in the news aggregator of your choice and you will get updates whenever new posts are made that match your query.

I have seen a superb documentary on surf history, lifestyle and … big waves surfing, called Riding giants. Specially the third part about big waves surfing and Laird Hamilton makes this movie different. I have already seen a lot of shots with big waves but these ones…are just unbelievable.

“Riding Giants” has 3 parts or acts, each concentrating on one surfing innovator and the culture in which he thrived.

1) The first act explores the world of Greg Noll, surfing’s flamboyant celebrity of the 1950s and 1960s. Interviews with Noll and other surfing giants of the time, including Ricky Grigg, Mickey Munoz, and Mike Stang, take us through the genesis of the surfing lifestyle in Southern California to Hawaii’s Waimea Bay, through the explosion in surfing popularity brought on by “Gidget” in 1959, up until Noll surfed “the greatest swell of the 20th century” at Makaha in December of 1969.

2) “Riding Giants”‘ second act focuses on Jeff Clark and the surfers of Maverick’s in Northern California. Clark tells the story of surfing Maverick’s alone for 15 years before finally convincing 2 other surfers to join him in 1990. Maverick’s surfers talk about the challenges of cold water, fog, and rocks and the day that Mark Foo died.

3) The third act of “Riding Giants” profiles Laird Hamilton, a man who has been described as the “best big wave rider the world has seen”, and explores the relatively new field of tow-in surfing, in which surfing becomes a partnership instead of a solitary pursuit. A tow-in by a jet ski provides surfers with the speed required to catch enormous waves -up to 80 feet- at considerable peril. Hamilton and fellow surfers Darrick Doerner, Dave Kalama, and Gerry Lopez talk about discovering the tow-in technique and surfing Peahi (Jaws).

[via Rodrigo]

More news published about the coming event:
– have a look at the official blog.
– dates are confirmed: 5th & 6th December, in Paris
– Robert Scoble and Shel Israel confirmed as speakers
– costs: 200 euros (without VAT) for the 2 days + lunches + cocktail party on Monday evening
– “merge” (it is in the air ;-) between Around the blog and Blog 2.0
– registration and program will be available in a few days

[via ZDnet.de]

First screenshots of the new look&feel; of Microsoft Office 12, presented at the Professional Developers Conference 2005 in Los Angeles.

Microsoft Word 12

Microsoft Excel 12

Microsoft Powerpoint 12

Microsoft Access 12

[via BusinessWeek]

It is just me or I have a problem today to understand these acquisition-deals?

Oracle Corp. is buying its struggling rival Siebel Systems Inc. for about $5.85 billion, continuing a recent shopping spree that has eliminated two of its biggest competitors as it aims to topple Germany’s SAP AG in the business applications software market.

Under the terms of the deal announced Monday, Redwood Shores-based Oracle will pay $10.66 per share in cash or stock for San Mateo-based Siebel, a once rapidly growing maker of customer support software that has fallen on hard times during the past three years.

The price represented a 17 percent premium from Siebel’s market value entering Monday.

Siebel shares rose $1.18, or 12.9 percent, to $10.31 during midday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, where Oracle’s shares gained 12 cents to $13.40.

Siebel has $2.24 billion in cash, reducing Oracle’s net takeover cost to $3.6 billion.

[…] In the past nine months, Oracle has either completed or announced five takeovers of business applications software makers, an expansion that has cost more than $17.6 billion so far.

The spree has swept up two of the industry’s best-known names, Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft Inc., both of which were run by former Oracle executives who had developed a frosty relationship with their former boss, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

For its part, SAP downplayed the significance of Oracle’s latest conquest. “Oracle is in the business to buy customers. Ours is to service customers,” said SAP spokesman Tony Roddam.

The Siebel acquisition, expected to close early next year, affects about 4,000 customers.

[…] Industry analyst Richard Williams of Garban Institutional Equities predicted Oracle will lay off more than 2,000 workers, based on the percentage of jobs that the company eliminated after devouring PeopleSoft, which had about 11,000 employees. Oracle fired 5,000 workers after that deal.

[via News.com]

I have a lot of respect for eBay, I am a big fan and convinced Skype’s user. But this move is just incomprehensible for me:
– The valuation is incredibly high. is the bubble back? oh no….. I mean, linked with the number of downloads/clients of Skype. Come on ;-) Let’s see how the “normal non-geek” guy will move on, when MS / Yahoo / Google will integrate VoIP’s functions in their very very largely spread tools.
– What are the real differentiators / entry barriers of Skype? I mean, Yahoo and Microsoft already acquired VoIP technology through start-ups, the technology is not in the center.
– Finally, and the most important point: what is the strategic link between Skype and eBay?? I mean, the idea that the current users are waiting for a way of communicating and discussing the deals per VoIP is….again incomprehensible.

On the other side, big congrats to the Skype’s team. What for a deal :-)

Have a look at the more professional analysis of Rodrigo and Jeff. And some inputs well summarized by News.com:

Company executives said Monday that eBay plans to pay $1.3 billion in cash and $1.3 billion in stock to the global communications company. It has agreed to hand over up to an extra $1.5 billion, for a total payout of more than $4 billion, if Skype meets certain financial targets by 2008, according to a presentation to investors on Monday morning.

[…] Luxembourg-based Skype, founded in 2002 by Scandinavian entrepreneurs, offers free computer-to-computer voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls and low-cost connectivity between computer and landline or mobile phones. It is considered the market leader in nearly all of the 225 countries and independent territories where it does business, according to a company press release. The company expects revenue of $60 million this year and more than $200 million in 2006, a Skype representative confirmed Monday. Skype has not yet posted a profit, an executive told Reuters.

Skype generates nearly half of its revenue base in Europe, about a quarter in Asia, and about an eighth in North America. The fast-growing company said it has 54 million subscribers and adds 150,000 users each day. There is currently about a 1 percent overlap among Skype and eBay users, according to the eBay investor presentation.

eBay CEO Meg Whitman told investors in a conference call that she hoped a power trio of eBay, Paypal and Skype would deliver an “unparalleled e-commerce and communications engine” by “removing a key point of friction between buyers and sellers.”