Reuters - Microsoft exec sees lower margins from "cloud"

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Microsoft exec sees lower margins from "cloud"

Friday, Jun 05, 2009 2:32PM UTC

PALO ALTO, California (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp's chief software architect said on Thursday the profit margins on providing online services -- broadly known as cloud computing -- would likely yield a lower profit margin than the company's existing software business.

"The margins on services are not like the margins on software, so it (cloud computing) will increase our profit and it will increase our revenue, but you won't have that margin," said Ray Ozzie on Thursday at a Silicon Valley technology event.

Ozzie is the main driving force behind the world's largest software company's gradual move toward a cloud-based approach to its products. He has been in charge of Microsoft's long-term technical strategy since co-founder Bill Gates announced he was stepping down from day-to-day involvement with the company three years ago.

Microsoft has made only tentative steps into the cloud arena so far, but has been investing in data centers to house customers' data and later this year is expected to unveil its 'Azure' platform, which will allow developers to write applications to work on Microsoft's cloud.

"The margins at the low level, at the Azure level, are going to be lower than the top level, where you're delivering a solution or something like Exchange," said Ozzie, referring to Microsoft's popular e-mail and calendar application. "You're pricing that solution around a business value more than cost so the margins are still very, very good."

Companies have historically run their software locally, on servers, but as the Internet has grown in speed and ubiquity, some are starting to use the cloud to run their applications. In theory at least, customers save money on hardware and maintenance while suppliers get a new source of fees by storing data and providing services online.

Early pioneers of cloud computing have been Amazon.com Inc, Google Inc and Salesforce.com Inc, which may eventually pose a threat to Microsoft, whose software is still chiefly run on local systems.

Reuters - Fans gather for launch of "iPhone killer" Palm Pre

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Fans gather for launch of "iPhone killer" Palm Pre

Sunday, Jun 07, 2009 4:58PM UTC

By Sinead Carew and Jessica Wohl

NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Small crowds gathered on Saturday for the official launch of Pre, the smartphone seen as Palm Inc's best chance to claw back market share from Apple Inc's iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd's Blackberry.

The new high-end phone, considered a pivotal product for both Palm and Sprint Nextel, has been greeted by rave reviews.

Lines were far shorter than those that snaked around Apple stores for its first hugely popular iPhone two years ago, but many consumers said they were eager for the new product.

"I wanted their iPhone killer. I've been anticipating this for a while," said Peter Lewis, who bought phones for himself and his wife at a Sprint store in Chicago, where some 45 people were in line when the doors opened at 8 a.m.

"This is my birthday present to myself," said Wilma Rivera, 36, a heating technician who brought her 17-month-old daughter to Sprint's flagship store in Manhattan.

Rivera, a long-time Palm user, said while she had been tempted by iPhone, sold only by AT&T Inc in the United States, she "never wanted to leave Sprint."

Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. mobile telephone service, is depending on Pre to help stem defections and win back subscribers from rivals such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc.

Sprint spokeswoman Jennifer Walsh Keifer said late on Saturday that Sprint had sold out of Pre phones at a number of different locations around the country and that the company was doing its best to restock stores.

Pre is hitting the shelves just before Apple is widely expected to announce a new iPhone on June 8.

PRICE AND KEYBOARD

The Pre costs $199.99, after a $100 rebate, for customers who sign a two-year service contract. It is priced in line with the $199 smaller-capacity iPhone. Pre's monthly service fees start at $69.99, including unlimited text messaging, lower than the cost of iPhone service plans with similar features.

"It's always nice to see a bunch of people waiting for a product you worked on," Palm Executive Chairman Jon Rubinstein, a former Apple executive who helped create the iPod, said at a Sprint store in San Francisco's financial district, where more than a dozen people lined up to purchase a Pre.

He said the opportunity for smartphones was big enough to sustain a market for three to five successful vendors.

"For us, the opportunity is not to take customers away from RIM or Apple," Rubinstein said, but rather to entice users of lower-level cell phones to upgrade to a more powerful smartphone.

Some who waited in line on Saturday were clearly more technologically savvy.

Juan Mondragon, a 33-year-old jewelry store manager in line at another San Francisco store, said he wanted to compare the Pre to his current iPhone, even if the experiment meant paying for two separate service plans.

"At least I can afford it for one month," Mondragon said.

The Pre's tiny keyboard is expected to attract some consumers who find it difficult to type on iPhone's virtual touchscreen, such as Lynne Margolin, a Chicago grandmother who traded up from a Palm 650 Treo to the Pre on Saturday.

Margolin said she was concerned the number of applications may be limited early on compared to the vast number of "apps" her friends can get on their iPhones.

Pre was the most talked about device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. It is the first Palm phone to use the company's new webOS operating system.

Palm investors have been waiting for its new mobile platform since June 2007, when Elevation Partners took a $325 million, 25 percent stake in Palm and brought in Rubinstein.

Sprint hopes to attract corporate clients, but the Pre could have a difficult time making inroads with often conservative corporate technology departments.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Will Dunham)

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Reuters - Just a few on Twitter do all the tweeting: study

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Just a few on Twitter do all the tweeting: study

Friday, Jun 05, 2009 5:45AM UTC

By Erin Kutz

BOSTON (Reuters) - A tiny fraction of those who use the fast-growing social network phenomenon Twitter generate nearly all the content, a Harvard study shows.

That makes it hard for companies to use the micro-blogging site as an accurate gauge of public opinion, the Harvard Business School study showed.

Twitter Inc is a social networking website in which users post messages of 140 characters or less -- known as "tweets" -- that can be viewed by other users who elect to follow them.

The Harvard study examined public entries of a randomly selected group of 300,000 Twitter users. The researchers studied in May the content created in the lifetime of the users' Twitter accounts.

It found that 10 percent of Twitter users generated more than 90 percent of the content, said Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, who led the research. More than half of all Twitter users post messages on the site less than once every 74 days.

The median number of lifetime "tweets" per user is just one, according the research.

Companies are increasingly turning to Twitter to improve their understanding of how consumers view them, he said.

But some users are far more active and vocal than others, limiting information gleaned from messages on the site, said Piskorski, an assistant professor of strategy at Harvard Business School.

"If you're trying to get what a representative cross-section of the public is thinking, you're probably better off staying away from Twitter," he said in an interview.

Piskorski said Twitter could still be useful in responding to specific customer concerns. It can also be effective marketing, as companies with Twitter accounts can advertise sales and deals to users who follow them on the site.

JetBlue Airways Corp, Comcast Corp and Dell Inc are among companies with Twitter accounts.

JetBlue provides information on Twitter such as announcements of terminal changes at airports and tips on how to pack and directly answers customers' questions. Dell uses Twitter to point customers to discounts. Comcast's account largely responds to customer gripes.

"Enough of our customers are talking about their interactions with us that we get a decent sample of what's going on a daily basis that we wouldn't necessarily get from other long-term studies," JetBlue spokesman Morgan Johnston said in a telephone interview.

Unlike other social networking sites like Facebook.com, men are almost twice as likely to follow other men on Twitter than they were to follow women, according to the study.

Women were also more likely to follow men than they were to follow other female users.

Piskorski said the study did not indicate whether this was because women were asked less often to be followed or because women are more selective in accepting followers.

Follow up research to these findings will likely be released later this month, he said.

According to recent data compiled by Nielsen Online, which measures Internet traffic, Twitter's website had more than 7 million unique visitors in February, compared to 475,000 in February 2008.

(Editing by Jason Szep and Eric Beech)

CNN - Actor David Carradine found dead

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Actor David Carradine found dead

American actor David Carradine has been found dead, hanging by a nylon rope in a hotel room closet in Bangkok, Thailand, according a Thai police official.

His personal manager, Chuck Binder, confirmed his death but gave no details.

The rope was believed to be from the hotel room curtains, Bangkok Police Lt. Col. Pirom Chanpirom said.

He said investigators found no sign of forced entry into Carradine's room.

An autopsy was being conducted at a Bangkok hospital, but no results will be available for another day, he said.

Police provided Carradine's family with the same information about their investigation, said Tiffany Smith, Carradine's personal co-manager. Smith said that she was "in complete shock" and that suggestions that Carradine took his own life are unbelievable.

"Knowing David, he would never commit suicide," and his death comes at a time when his "career is on a roll," she said.

Carradine was in Bangkok for filming of the movie "Stretch," being produced by a United Kingdom-based company, she said. He was the only American cast member.

Carradine, who became famous in the 1970s when he starred as traveling Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine in the television series "Kung Fu," was 72.

Modern audiences may best know him as "Bill" in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films. He earned a 2005 Golden Globe nomination for his role in the second movie in the two-part saga.

His career included more than 100 feature films, two dozen television movies and theater work, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Carradine made appearances in television series including "Gunsmoke" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." His first starring role in a series was as the title character in "Shane" in 1966.

He worked with such directors as Martin Scorsese in "Box Car Bertha" in 1972 and Robert Altman in "The Long Goodbye" in 1973. iReport: Share memories of David Carradine

Carradine was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role as folk music legend Woody Guthrie in the 1976 movie "Bound For Glory," according to a biography on his official Web site.

His theater career began while he studied drama at San Francisco State College in California.

He later landed roles on Broadway in "The Deputy" and "The Royal Hunt of the Sun."

Carradine, who was married five times and divorced four, is survived by his widow, Annie Bierman, according to People magazine.

He was the son of actor John Carradine, a character actor who had appeared in hundreds of films, plays and television episodes.

"David's career as an artist did not begin on the stage, though some of his early career was on and off Broadway. His earliest work was as a sculptor and painter," Carradine's official Web site says.

The site also includes an "Art Bio" in which the actor opens up about his life.

"I've always had an especially hard time with everything I've tried to do," Carradine wrote.

"I've made it pretty big as an actor in spite of being terminally shy. ... Invariably, I had huge obstacles to overcome in anything I tried. Had to work against my genes to achieve my dreams."

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Reuters - North Korea's Kim moves to anoint youngest son as heir

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North Korea's Kim moves to anoint youngest son as heir

Tuesday, Jun 02, 2009 11:55AM UTC

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has signaled the anointment of his youngest son as heir to the ruling family dynasty as the rival Koreas bolstered their militaries along a disputed sea border on Tuesday.

North Korea, whose increasingly military posturing after last week's nuclear test has prompted U.S. and South Korean forces to raise the alert level, is readying mid-range missiles for test launches, the South's Yonhap news agency reported a lawmaker as saying after a defense briefing.

The news rattled financial markets in Seoul, adding to worries over reports the impoverished state is preparing to test fire a long-range missile that could fly as far as U.S. territory. The main Seoul index closed slightly down.

Analysts believe that Kim Jong-il, whose power base stems from his support for the military, may be using the growing tension to give him greater leverage over power elites at home to nominate his own successor.

It has raised alarm in the region over how far iron ruler Kim, 67 and thought to have suffered a stroke last year, may be prepared to take his latest military grandstanding.

North Korea has asked the country's main bodies and its overseas missions to pledge loyalty to Kim's youngest son Kim Jong-un, various South Korean media outlets quoted informed sources as saying.

"I was notified by the South Korean government of such moves and the loyalty pledges," Park Jie-won, a member of the opposition Democratic Party, said in a statement.

He declined to name his source but Yonhap said Park was among a group of lawmakers briefed on Monday night by the country's spy agency about the succession plans.

Kim Jong-un, born either in 1983 or early 1984, was educated in Switzerland and intelligence sources have said he appears to be the most capable of Kim's three known sons.

Even by North Korea's opaque standards, very little is known about the son, whose youth is a potential problem in a society that adheres closely to the importance of seniority.

"There is a significant link between North Korea's recent military provocations and succession issues," said Lee Dong-bok, an expert on the North's negotiating tactics.

STOCKPILED AMMUNITION

North Korea, which has hundreds of mid-range missiles that can hit all of South Korea and most of Japan, is readying at least three or four missiles for firing, Yonhap quoted the lawmaker as saying after a briefing with defense officials.

The missiles could include the Rodong, which has been deployed since the 1990s, and a new intermediate range missile that can fly 3,000 km, the report said.

The missiles take little time to prepare, while it takes weeks to ready its longest-range rockets.

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo quoted a military source as saying the North had stepped up its military training, stockpiled ammunition and imposed a no-sail order off its west coast waters to prepare for a possible fight with the South.

In Seoul, the navy said it was deploying a guided-missile naval vessel to the same area in the Yellow Sea, close to the disputed border that has seen two deadly clashes between the rival states in the past 10 years.

The navy rarely announces such moves and it underscores the hard line being taken toward its communist neighbor by conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who earlier in the day won support at a meeting he hosted of Southeast Asian leaders who jointly condemned last week's nuclear test.

Many analysts say the North may opt for a skirmish on the sea border as the next step as it ratchets up tension but few believe it would dare put its million-strong but poorly equipped army into direct battle with the U.S.-backed South Korean military.

GUARDED SECRETS

The succession has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the highly secretive North.

Yonhap quoted an informed source as saying the request for an oath of loyalty by North Korean officials to the youngest son came shortly after the nuclear test on May 25, which was hailed by the North's propaganda as a crowning achievement in Kim Jong-il's "military first" rule.

In April, Kim Jong-il put to rest any doubt about whom he sees as his second in command when he elevated his brother-in-law Jang Song-taek to a powerful military post, analysts said.

Analysts said they see the energetic and urbane Jang, 63, as the real power broker after Kim who will groom the successor. Jang, who once fell out of Kim's favor, has in recent year's been Kim's right hand man, they said.

(Additional reporting by Kim Junghyun and Jungyoun Park, editing by Jonathan Thatcher)