Bye Bye TDMA

at&t Wireless and Alltel finally are shutting down their old analog and first-generation cellular (TDMA) networks in February 2008. Verizon Wireless says on its Web site that it will retire its analog network on Feb. 18, 2008, and will not provide analog service after that date.

Almost nobody will notice. The carriers say a million phones out of 250 million in use might be affected. No phone capable of text messaging uses analog technology. No Sprint or T-Mobile phones use analog, either.

Carriers have been telling analog customers about the shutdown and offering them new digital service plans and phones, so it isn't clear that any active users will experience issues. There might be some "phones sitting in drawers" that users keep around for emergency 911 calling, without plans, that could be affected.

But at&t, which had the largest number of analog customers at one time, has been phasing analog out since 2001, and with the high rates of phone replacement, can't still be supporting many users on the older system.

Separately from the analog shutdown, Alltel and AT&T will finish phasing out networks that use a first-generation digital technology known as D-AMPS or TDMA (for Time Division Multiple Access).

Google Growth Uneven

Some observers caution that Google is over-estimated where it comes to innovation. "Not everything Google does succeeds," that line of thinking goes. And of course that is quite correct. Lots of things Google has done have not been runaway successes. Some initiatives have failed, plain and simple. GTalk hasn't caught on, and Google bought YouTube because Google's home-grown video site wasn't getting traction.

Perhaps the implication is that potential competitors shouldn't fear Google as much as they seem to, as Google fails often enough. Perhaps the other way to look at matters is the frequency with which Google does, in fact, succeed, compared to the number of attempts. And given the number of attempts, the more Google fails, the more it will discover things that work.

Sure, Google seems to go off on tangents now and then. Google defends these explorations as attempts to find other really big businesses. Maybe. And maybe Google just goes off on tangents now and then. Either way, the attempt to start new things is going to lead to lots of failures, if Google tries enough new things. Some of us might argue that is precisely what makes Google so fearsome: it innovates so fast for a firm its size.

Still, the observation that Google does not succeed with much of anything outside of search might be premature. Even "search" took a while to catch on. So, no, Google does not immediately dominate "every" market or segment it enters. It experiments. It fails. If it succeeds 10 percent of the time, and fails often enough, it just might discover some significant-sized new businesses.

Christmas Humor

MEMO: December 1st
TO: ALL EMPLOYEES

I'm happy to inform you that the company Christmas Party will take place
on December 23rd at Luigi's Open Pit Barbecue.
There will be lots of spiked eggnog and a small band playing traditional
carols... feel free to sing along.
And don't be surprised if our CEO shows up dressed as Santa Claus to
light the Christmas tree!
Exchange of gifts among employees can be done at that time; however, no
gift should be over $10.
Merry Christmas to you, and your family.
Patty Lewis, Human Resources Director


MEMO: December 2nd
TO: ALL EMPLOYEES

In no way was yesterday's memo intended to exclude our Jewish employees.
We recognize that Hanukkah is an important holiday that often coincides
with Christmas (though unfortunately not this year). However, from now
on, we're calling it our "Holiday Party."
The same policy applies to employees who are celebrating Kwanzaa at this
time.
There will be no Christmas tree and no Christmas carols sung.
Happy Holidays to you, and your family.
Patty Lewis, Human Resources Director
MEMO: December 3rd
TO: ALL EMPLOYEES

Regarding the anonymous note I received from a member of Alcoholics
Anonymous requesting a non-drinking table, I'm happy to accommodate this
request, but, don't forget, if I put a sign on the table that reads, "AA
Only," you won't be anonymous anymore.
In addition, forget about the gifts exchange -- no gifts will be allowed
since the union members feel that $10 is too much money.
Happy Holidays to you, and your family.
Patty Lewis, Human Researchers Director


MEMO: December 7th
TO: ALL EMPLOYEES

I've arranged for members of Overeaters Anonymous to sit farthest from
the dessert buffet and pregnant women closest to the restrooms.
Gays are allowed to sit with each other.
Lesbians do not have to sit with the gay men; each will have their own table.
Yes, there will be a flower arrangement for the gay men's table.
Happy now!?
Patty Lewis, Human Racehorses Director

MEMO: December 9th
TO: ALL EMPLOYEES

People, people! -- Nothing sinister was intended by wanting our CEO to
play Santa Claus!
Even if the anagram of "Santa" does happen to be "Satan," there is no
evil connotation to our own "little man in a red suit."
Patty Lewis, Human Rat Race Director

MEMO: December 10th
TO: ALL EMPLOYEES

Vegetarians -- I've had it with you people! We're going to hold this
party at Luigi's Open Pit whether you like it or not, you can just sit
at the table farthest from the "grill of death," as you put it, and
you'll get salad bar only, including hydroponic tomatoes. But, you know
tomatoes have feelings, too. They scream when you slice them. I've heard
them scream.
I'm hearing them right now... Ha!
I hope you all have a rotten holiday! Drive drunk and die, you hear me?!
The ***** from Hell

MEMO: December 14th
TO: ALL EMPLOYEES

I'm sure I speak for all of us in wishing Patty Lewis a speedy recovery
from her stress-related illness. I'll continue to forward your cards to
her at the sanitarium. In the meantime, management has decided to cancel
our Holiday Party and give everyone the afternoon of the 23rd off with
full pay.
Happy Holidays.
Terri Bishop, Acting Human Resources Director

IBM Blue Cloud: Internet Style Data Centers

IBM’s Blue Cloud is a platform for cloud-based computing, expected to be available to customers in the spring of 2008, supporting systems with Power and x86 processors.

“Blue Cloud" will allow corporate data centers to operate more like the Internet, enabling computing across a distributed, globally accessible fabric of resources, rather than on local machines or remote server farms.

It is, along with Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, a seminal step towards network-based computing architectures. Sun Microsystems was ahead of its time in declaring that the "network is the computer." But cloud computing is going to fulfill the prediction.

Call it "software as a service" if you like. The point is that we are nearing an era where resources will be invoked from the computing cloud using a Web browser. Policies still will be needed to authorize use of specific resources, to be sure. But the larger point is that computing, storage and application resources will reside "in the cloud," and be invoked as required by users at the edge of the cloud.

There are all sorts of practical advantages. Distributed or mobile workers can simply invoke their services and information from where they are, using a standard Web browser. Everyone always will have the latest version, the latest patch, the latest version or update.

Computationally intense activities can be handled by clusters of machines designed for such intensity. Storage can be invoked, not carried; used rather than built.

If a developer needs expensive resources, they can be gotten on a sort of "time shared" basis, rather than on a "build your own computing center" basis.

Blue Cloud will be based on open standards and open source software supported by IBM software, systems technology and services.

The interesting speculation is about how cloud computing might change the way enterprises think about their application and storage architectures. Given the massive increase in the scale of IT environments, one wonders how they'll assess the trade-offs between "building data centers" and "renting reources."

Up to this point, the enterprise data center has been the penultimate computing resource. Might the "cloud" surpass even local and networked data centers?

Has the Web Killed Enterprise Intranets?

Between emerging social networking tools and Web browser front ends, it is conceivable that the need for enterprise "intranets" is not so urgent anymore. As the Internet was seen as an external network, intranets were supposed to make internal data bases, information and communication available to enterprise associates.

But email, instant messaging, texting, mobile phones, Saleforce.com and other Web-based tools arguably not allow organizations to do those things without building dedicated intranets.

Instead, we've flipped everything inside out. The big movement now is towards software architectures that allow internal resources to be exposed to users with access to Web browsers.

Airline Exec for Red Hat

Sometime big has changed when a former Delta Airlines COO takes over as the CEO of a technology company like Red Hat.

Red Hat isn’t a little startup trying to convert people to Linux. It’s a business selling to big corporations. It needs leadership used to selling enterprises.Also, if Red Hat can reasonably expect to compete to supply half of the worldwide server market by 2015, it will really have to scale. Companies like Delta are about systems and logistics, the sort of things one needs to really scale.

James Whitehurst, of course, wouldn't be the first non-technology executive brought in to head a technology company. Lou Gerstner transformed IBM into a services company, using a background of RJR Nabisco and American Express.

The choice shows how mainstream open source has become. Red Hat needs to sell to enterprise executives, with huge scale.

Vonage, AT&T Settle VoIP Patent Dispute

Vonage and at&t have finalized the settlement of a dispute between the companies. No details were released. But $39 million had been mentioned earlier.