BT Gets Monkeys Off Back

In 2001, BT had just three problems, says Sir Christopher Bland, BT Chairman. "Get the banks off our back, get the newspapers off our back, and get the politicians off our back." Bland says the monkeys are gone. To wit, the almost £30 billion debt situation has been dealt with. The issue of whether BT could grow revenues in a climate of declining traditional access lines has been answered. And while not everybody is completely reassured, BT has shown success at transforming itself from a "boring utility" to a company growing software and information technology businesses.

That isn't to say BT has succeeded wildly with all its initiatives. So far, there is little to show in the fixed-mobile convergence and personal TV areas, for example.

Where BT really has succeeded are network IT services and broadband. Over the last five years, network IT services have grown with the compound annual growth rate of almost 20 percent, at £4.4 billion, as BT's largest single stream or revenue, exceeding those of other calls or lines.

And broadband is the defining new service of the decade, having grown seven fold.

BT has grown its earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation for five consecutive quarters, with a nine-quarter improving trend.

The impressive thing is that mobility is such a slight factor. For most other tier one providers, mobility is the main story. BT has grown without mobile revenues to speak of. Certainly not on the scale of broadband and IT services. Maybe new monkeys are going to jump on. But at least the old olds are gone.

"The Network is the Computer"

Unfortunately, some of us can remember John Gage, Sun Microsystems co-founder saying this in 1984 or so. Nearly a quarter of a century later, we still haven't fully gotten there. With the rise of peer to peer technologies, many will offer we won't need to go there. Oddly enough, and for all sorts of reasons, network-centric computing is starting to look a lot like the older client-server model many thought we were morphing beyond.

Users don't care about that, of course. What they care about is how their lives change for the better. And there now is no question but that this new age of "computing architecture" is changing things. We would argue it is for the better, though the outcome is open.

We used to talk about "the network as the computer." Today, we talk about Web 2.0, which uses the networked computing platform and adds social elements (Dion Hinchcliffe produced the graphic). In some ways, "the network as the computer" will change at least some of the methods we employ to discover and retrieve video, audio and other content.

In the enterprise space, it might simply mean the ability to access centralized databases with a Web browser as the front end. At least at first. Later, more collaborative modes will develop, where end users collectively create value and knowledge of usefulness for enterprises. The analogy is Amazon and eBay, where much of the value of the service is created by users.

Still, there are clear portents. There's salesforce.com, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, all of which deliver computing resources and applications on a hosted basis.

What changes here is much more than the way we use computational resources. Networked computing changes what we can do with computational resources. And those new ways are going to serioiusly shake business models across media and communications.

Google Wants The Best Answer

"Back in 2001, Eric asked for a brainstorm of a few "splashy" ideas in search," says Marissa Mayer, Google VP. "I made a few mockups, one of which was for "universal search," she says. "It was a sample search results page for Britney Spears that, in addition to web results, also had news, images, and groups results right on the same page."

"Even then, we could see that people could easily become overwhelmed with the number of different search tools available on Google, let alone those that would be created over the next few years," Meyer says. "This proliferation of tools, while useful, has outgrown the old model of search," says Meyer. "We want to help you find the very best answer, even if you don't know where to look."

That mockup and early observations were the motivation behind the universal search effort Google expects will break down silos of information that exist on the Web. Google's vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking for. Google already is incorporating information from a variety of previously separate sources – including videos, images, news, maps, books, and websites – into a single set of results.

In principle, the new approach means that searches on a single key word or phrase will return unified results that might previously have required separate searches in "Web," "news," "video," "image," "people" and "maps" engines.

Google also is deploying a new technical infrastructure that will enable the search engine to handle the computationally intensive tasks required to produce universal search results and releasing the first stage of an upgraded ranking mechanism that automatically and objectively compares different types of information.

New dynamically generated navigation links have been added above the search results to suggest additional information that is relevant to a user's query. For example, a search for "python" will now generate links to Google Blog Search™, Google Book Search™, Google Groups™, and Google Code™, to let the user know there is additional information on his or her query in each of those areas.

As a result, users can find a wider array of information on their topic, including data types they might not have initially considered.

Google's homepage and a number of applications have also been updated with a new navigation bar to provide easier access to popular Google products. Now, instead of having links above the Google.com homepage search box, users will see a navigation bar on the top left side of the page with various Google search properties and popular products including Gmail™, Google Calendar™, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Picasa Web Albums.

Google also announced a new experimental version of its popular search service called Google Experimental, available on Google Labs. This new test site provides users an opportunity to try out some of the latest search experiments and innovations and provide Google with feedback.

One of the first experiments to be featured on the site enables users to view their search results on a map or timeline. For instance, when someone searches for "Albert Einstein" on Google Experimental, they can choose to view the search results on a map that shows locations mentioned within web pages about Albert Einstein or on a timeline that illustrates the history of Albert Einstein's life.

Skype 2.6 for Mac Now Available

Skype has released Skype for Mac 2.6, the latest version of its communication software for Mac users. For the first time, Mac users will be able to enjoy a new Skype feature before it's available to Windows users.

Specifically, Mac 2.6 offers a new call-transfer feature that is exclusive to the Mac platform. Users can now select More > Call Transfer to transfer an ongoing call to another Skype user on their contact list. It is obvious how this will appeal to small business users, especially lone eagles and remote personnel.

Beyond the exclusive call-transfer feature, Skype for Mac 2.6 incorporates a number of nice Skype features that were previously only available on other platforms.

Mac users now can join public chats. There is a chat typing indicator. Skype Prime offers the ability to call a premium-service provider and pay for their advice and knowledge with Skype credit.

Automatic updates are automatically pushed to end users and DTMF tones for automatic answering services are available during Skype-to-Skype calls.

Past Early Adopters?

Wal-Mart is offering Skype certified hardware in 1,800 of its stores throughout the United States, including headsets, webcams and handsets, as well as the first prepaid cards for Skype available in the U.S. Either Skype and Wal-Mart think Skype is way past the early adopter phase, or else both believe early adopters shop at Wal-Mart. We think the latter might be closer to the truth.

"Free is Going to Win..."

The paid video download market is ultimately a dead end, argues Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. "Free is going to win."

Online video sites that sell shows and movies such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes will likely peak this year as more programming is made available on free outlets supported by advertising. Sales of movies and television shows are expected to almost triple to $279 million in 2007 from an estimated $98 million last year.

"In the video space, iTunes is just a temporary flash while consumers wait for better ways to get video. They're already coming," says McQuivey, who says the paid download video market a "dead end."

That's certainly the developing conventional wisdom, but might not be entirely accurate. Most video watched today is partly ad supported, and partly subscription based. U.S. Cable TV revenues of $74.7 billion include $33.6 billion of basic cable (ad-supported channels) and $6.5 billion in commercial-free premium channels. Cable advertising is about $5 billion annually. So for linear video, ad support is crucial for most channels.

But "pay to own" or "pay to watch" models also are well established. The "pay to own" market includes $16 billion of annual movie and DVD sales. The "pay to watch" segment includes $8 billion in rental revenue. None of that is likely to change simply because a new distribution method is added to the legacy mix. In other words, "pay per view" or "on demand" always has been a smaller portion of overall video consumption.

So the conventional wisdom probably is right: ad support will drive most online video viewing. But not all. There still will be some appetite for downloading to own, just as people now watch ad-supported video and buy DVDs.

Need Engineers? Buy a Company

Google buys a start-up once every few days, or around one a week, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "In the past, we would buy businesses in lieu of (hiring) engineers." That's why they call it "Google speed."