Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Cloud, edge and decentralized computing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (138)	7/17/2008 9:14:32 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 1685

Apple's consumer level cloud offering: In Sync to Pierce the Cloud July 17, 2008 By DAVID POGUE “Cloud computing” is a white-hot buzzword these days. It basically means working with files and programs that reside on the Internet, beyond your company’s walls — out there in the “cloud.” Everyday consumers are doing cloud computing, too, maybe without even realizing it. When you use an Internet-based backup service, or Google’s online word processor or spreadsheet, or a Gmail or Yahoo mail account, you’re working with data on a secure Internet server somewhere — not on your hard drive. Apple is the latest company to find a silver lining in the cloud. Its new MobileMe service ($100 a year) is an overhaul of a suite of Internet features that used to be called .Mac. Over the years, two million people signed up for .Mac, according to Apple, even though it was a sort of motley, unfocused service. MobileMe, however, has a much clearer mission that solves a much clearer problem. It’s meant to keep the e-mail, calendars, address books and Web bookmarks on all of your computers — Macs, Windows PCs, iPhones and iPod Touches — synchronized in real time. It works by storing the master copy of all this information in the cloud. Whenever your machines are online, they connect to the mother ship and update themselves. When you edit an address on your iPhone, you’ll find the same change in Address Book (on your Mac) and Outlook (on your PC). If you send an e-mail reply from your PC at the office, you’ll find it in your Sent Mail folder on the Mac at home. MobileMe can be very helpful to families with busy calendars; now everybody can refer to the same, always-current datebook. You also escape the “two mailbox problem,” where your cellphone and computer have different e-mail addresses, so you can never remember where you read something. And you’ll never have to call home to ask someone to look up a phone number for you. All of this should sound familiar to corporate employees; the BlackBerry works much the same way, and so do computers and phones that connect to corporate Exchange servers. Indeed, Apple’s tag line for MobileMe is “Exchange for the rest of us.” (Which is an odd slogan, since the target audience — “the rest of us” — is people who have no idea what Exchange is.) So how is MobileMe? Well, let’s get the ugliness out of the way first: Its debut last week was a disaster that persisted for days. Existing .Mac members were supposed to be upgraded automatically, but many wound up having no e-mail at all for a day or two. There were bugs, glitches and error messages for days, making it one of the most ham-handed launches in Apple history. Maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea to introduce MobileMe and the iPhone 3G simultaneously. (Apple has since apologized to its customers and extended their subscriptions by 30 days.) All right, then: how is MobileMe now? Allow a couple of hours to set it up. There’s a lot of stuff to download and prepare, and Apple’s instructions aren’t always complete. You also have to set up your e-mail program to recognize your new MobileMe e-mail address, which ends with the conveniently short “me.com.” Mine, for example, is pogue@me.com; one perk of this fledgling service is that all the good addresses aren’t yet taken, as they are on Yahoo and Gmail. (Apple won’t say how much it paid to get the juicy domain name me.com. “Let’s just say it wasn’t sitting for $9.95 in the domain registry,” cracked a product manager.) Once everything’s ready, the magic is impressive. Make a change on your Mac, watch it appear on your iPhone and your PC. Add a new friend to the address book in Outlook Express on your Windows XP machine, and watch it appear in Windows Contacts on your Vista PC. Change an appointment in iCal on the kitchen Mac, and know that it will wirelessly sprout onto your traveling spouse’s iPhone four states away. And your Web bookmarks are the same everywhere. If a change is made on two machines simultaneously, you’re presented with the conflict — you see both versions — and with one click, you choose which one “wins.” On Macs, MobileMe can keep even more stuff synched, including your passwords and preference settings. Actually, there’s a fourth place where you can work with your data: on the Web. At Me.com, Apple has built attractive, ad-free, online versions of your address book, calendar, e-mail program and photo-organizing programs. Unlike most Web programs, these have the fluidity and shortcuts of desktop software. For example, you can drag and drop messages into e-mail folders, flip through photos with the mouse, drag vertically to create appointments on your calendar’s timeline, hit the Enter key instead of clicking O.K. in a dialog box, and so on. The beauty of the Web is, of course, that you can get to it from almost any computer. Beware, though: you need the latest version of Firefox or Apple’s Safari Web browser to exploit all the features. (After all those years of being treated like an oppressed minority, it must give Apple some satisfaction to exclude Internet Explorer because it “has known compatibility issues with modern Web standards.”) There’s actually a lot more to MobileMe than sync, since it also retains most of the features of the old .Mac service. For example, you can upload pictures and movies to one of the best gallery sites on the Web. Stunning, animated slide shows greet your visitors, who can, at your option, download your photo files at full resolution for printing. People can even submit their own photos to your gallery by e-mail or cellphone, if you like. You also get an iDisk: a virtual hard drive where you can park, back up or transfer files that are too big to send by e-mail. (Not all of the old .Mac features survive, however. E-greeting cards are gone; discussion groups, homemade Web pages and the Backup program are buried and played down.) MobileMe is the usual Apple value proposition: you might be able to find less expensive versions of its features online — various sync, backup and file-transfer sites — but none have the integration, polish and automation of Apple’s offering. Besides, the MobileMe price isn’t bad: for $100 a year, you get 20 gigabytes of online storage; the family pack costs $150 and gives you five accounts (40 gigabytes of storage total). Now, not to rain on Apple’s cloud parade, but there are some hitches. For example, all that crowing about “push” and “Exchange for the rest of us” is slightly exaggerated. Changes you make on the Web or on your iPhone are indeed transmitted back and forth instantly. But Windows PCs and Macs send and receive changes only once every 15 minutes, or whenever you use the Sync Now command on your menu bar or system tray. Apple says it’s working to make the sync more immediate and will stop advertising the phrase “push” until it does. Also, your to-do list is kept in perfect sync among Web, Mac and PC — but not the iPhone or iPod Touch. Bizarrely, they have no To-Do list at all, so there’s nothing to sync. Even so, and despite its rocky start, MobileMe stands to solve a messy problem for a lot of people; anyone who owns more than one computer or Smartphone is already familiar with the dread of having out-of-sync data. It’s also great to know that the very latest versions of your life’s most important databases (mail, appointments, address book) are always backed up in a place that’s safe from fire, flood or thieves. Put another way, you might really enjoy having your head in the cloud. E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com nytimes.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (138)	7/21/2008 2:59:54 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 1685

While not necessarily unique or the first... Will CherryPal be the first mass-market cloud computer? Chris Morrison \| July 21st, 2008 It may not be much to look at, but CherryPal’s new device — a $249 paperback-sized box containing an underpowered processor and a token amount of memory — is a forerunner of the oncoming revolution in “cloud” computing. You just stick in any keyboard or mouse with a USB connector and any standard monitor (VGA), and you’re up and running. Of course, being one of the first to do something doesn’t equate to being successful at it. But the CherryPal should excite anyone who believes that the average computer of the future will not only be Internet-connected, but also Internet-controlled. The CherryPal, set to begin shipping at the end of this month, is a true cloud computer, meaning almost all if its applications and data are stored online. A cloud computer is desirable for a few reasons. One is that small chips like the CherryPal’s 400 MHz Freescale processor can handle more tasks with the help of an outside server. Individual devices almost never need upgrades, and are harder to infect with viruses. Upgrades are also possible without replacing the computer, and files are accessible from anywhere. And the CherryPal requires only two watts to run, much less than a normal computer. Those reasons are why CherryPal hopes its device can rise past the more powerful competition to win a spot in the hearts of consumers. CEO Max Seybold says he hopes that students and less computer-savvy people will latch onto CherryPal as an alternative to traditional computers. Computing experts will likely suggest that it’s most useful as a secondary device to a home desktop or laptop. That’s probably true for you or I, but a substantial population of people who don’t care about computing power may be perfectly satisfied using only a CherryPal. However, there’s a wide array of competition awaiting the new device. Among them are companies like Apple, with its Mac Mini, and Shuttle, which sells the KPC starting at $229. There’s also Zonbu, which has a “hybrid” system that goes partway toward cloud computing for $299 — although getting all the features of the cloud requires an extra subscription fee, while CherryPal’s is free. CherryPal plans to market its device as being both simpler to operate than other computers and, because of its light construction and low energy use, as a “green” computer. However, it’s also not the first to use that approach. Wal-Mart said the same about its Everex gPC, which runs a version of Linux customized to hook up to Google Apps. Despite quickly selling out of its first run of 10,000 computers, Wal-Mart was dissatisfied with the results and stopped offering it in stores. It still sells the gPC online, for $150. Seybold says the CherryPal will offer better performance than such down-market systems, similar to a 2GHz computer running Windows Vista (unlike Windows, Seybold says the CherryPal is “unhackable”). But because of the wide array of competition, CherryPal’s success will hinge on its marketing efforts, which is more of an artistic than technical endeavor. Still, the release of the CherryPal is an interesting first stab at a cloud device. Along with web-based operating systems like Gh.o.st and Pi, the CherryPal may help blaze a path away from the major device-based operating systems, Mac OS and Windows, each of which has its share of problems. And for computer manufacturers, the CherryPal presents a whole different set of problems. Mike Bryars, a global manager at Freescale, says his company will do well selling chips for “embedded” computing. “Traditional PCs are great for productivity, but they’re not optimal devices. Why do people buy iPods when they can listen to MP3s on a laptop? At the end of the day, it’s a better device,” he says. Computer makers like Dell won’t be pleased with the idea of having a device for each application, when they want to sell expensive, full-featured systems instead; smaller devices are generally assumed to offer lower margins. However, when I asked Seybold whether his company could survive without hitting its target of hundreds of thousands to millions of units sold, he said that it could still turn a profit on “ridiculously few” units sold if necessary. CherryPal, based in Mountain View, Calif., raised its funding outside the US. It has taken over $5 million so far, from a Hong Kong-based private equity firm called Tristate and a group of angels in the United Kingdom. venturebeat.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (138)	7/21/2008 3:16:37 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1685

Connecting a stripped down PC to the cloud: Intel is projecting that by 2011, the market for the netbooks will be 40 million units a year, which is why Intel is jumping in with low-powered chips that would be used in the netbooks and the net-tops. Smaller PCs Cause Worry for Industry July 21, 2008 By MATT RICHTEL SAN FRANCISCO — The personal computer industry is poised to sell tens of millions of small, energy-efficient Internet-centric devices. Curiously, some of the biggest companies in the business consider this bad news. In a tale of sales success breeding resentment, computer companies are wary of the new breed of computers because their low price could threaten PC makers’ already thin profit margins. The new computers, often called netbooks, have scant onboard memory. They use energy-sipping computer chips. They are intended largely for surfing Web sites and checking e-mail. The price is small too, with some selling for as little as $300. The companies that pioneered the category were small too, like Asus and Everex, both of Taiwan. Despite their wariness of these slim machines, Dell and Acer, two of the biggest PC manufacturers, are not about to let the upstarts have this market to themselves. Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest PC maker, recently sidled into the market with a hybrid of a notebook and netbook that it calls the Mini-Note. Several makers are taking the low-powered PCs one step further. In the coming months, they are expected to introduce “net-tops,” low-cost versions of desktop computers intended for Internet access. A Silicon Valley start-up called CherryPal says it will challenge the idea that big onboard power is required to allow basic computing functions in the Internet age. On Monday it plans to introduce a $240 desktop PC that is the size of a paperback and uses two watts of power compared with the 100 watts of some desktops. It wants to take advantage of the trend toward “cloud computing,” in which data is managed and stored in distant servers, not on the actual machine. Industry analysts say that the emergence of this new class of low-cost, cloud-centric machines could threaten titans like Microsoft and Intel, or even H.P. and Dell, because the giants have built their companies on the notion that consumers want more power and functions built into their next computer. Some of the big computer companies put a positive spin on the low-cost machines, saying they welcome new categories. But they would just as soon this niche did not take off, given the relatively low profit margins. “When I talk to PC vendors, the No. 1 question I get is, how do I compete with these netbooks when what we really want to do is sell PCs that cost a lot more money?” said J. P. Gownder, an analyst with Forrester Research. Even as some PC vendors are jumping into the fray, others say they are resisting. Fujitsu, one of the world’s top 10 personal computer makers, said that it believes the low-cost netbook trend is a dangerous one for the bottom line. “We’re sitting on the sidelines not because we’re lazy. We’re sitting on the sidelines because even if this category takes off, and we get our piece of the pie, it doesn’t add up,” said Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product management for Fujitsu. “It’s a product that essentially has no margin.” Stan Glasgow, chief executive of Sony Electronics, said, “We are not looking at competing with Asus.” But he said the company is investigating what consumers want in a second PC. It is a market that caught the major computer companies — both hardware and software — by surprise after Asus, entered the market last year with the $300 Eee PC. The company thought the device would essentially appeal to the education market, or as a starter laptop for adolescents, but the interest has turned out to be broader. With an emphasis not in on-board applications (like word processing), but Internet-based ones like Google Docs, the Linux-based Eee PC sold out its 350,000 global inventory. It has been in short supply ever since, said Jackie Hsu, president of the American division of Asus. Everex has sold around 20,000 of its CloudBook, which sells for about $350. The sales are a veritable drop in the bucket compared with the 271 million desktop and laptop PCs shipped globally last year. But there is an intensifying debate about how big the category can become, and what segment of the market finds these computers appealing. IDC, a market research firm, is predicting that the category could grow from fewer than 500,000 in 2007 to nine million in 2012 as the market for second computers expands in developed economies. Intel is projecting that by 2011, the market for the netbooks will be 40 million units a year, which is why Intel is jumping in with low-powered chips that would be used in the netbooks and the net-tops. With its new Atom chip, Intel is competing against upstarts including Via, a Taiwanese company that has a chip called the C7. The C7 is showing up in netbooks and, indeed, is being used in the Everex models and in H.P.’s $500 Mini-Note. William Calder, an Intel spokesman, said that the cost of the Atom for PC makers is around $44, compared with $100 for a state-of-the-art chip. He said that Intel executives think the market for low-cost PCs is too big to pass up, though it does raise a potential threat to more powerful and more profitable computing lines. Microsoft has been a reluctant participant too. Even though it is no longer selling its Windows XP operating system software, it made an exception for makers of these low-cost laptops and desktops. Microsoft said it was responding to a groundswell of consumer interest in the low-cost machines, but some makers of those machines say Microsoft did so reluctantly because it did not want to lose market share to Linux. Tim Bajarin, an industry analyst with Creative Strategies, a technology consulting firm, said that while the big computer companies have been caught off guard by the market’s potential, they are finding little choice but to dive in. “H.P., Dell and these other PC makers have learned that if there’s consumer interest, you can’t just sit back and let someone else steal all the thunder,” he said. Hewlett-Packard thinks consumers want more than a mobile Internet terminal. “Our competitors proved there is a pretty good market,” Robert Baker, a notebook product manager at Hewlett-Packard conceded. Dell has not been specific about the price or features of its entry, but Michael Tatelman, vice president for marketing at Dell, said he believed that the category would have limited consumer appeal. They are useful for someone on the go at an airport or on a commuting trip on a bus, but not for a more intense computing experience, he said. “It’s a good 30- to 90-minute experience.” Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company nytimes.com