Why Demand Media and “Web 2.0 Domain Parking” Will Fail
My obsession with defensibility has led me into the exciting world of domaining. I enjoy getting into a new community of web entrepreneurs who think differently (and largely make more money) than SEOs. One of the recently hyped upcoming developments in domaining is the advent of “Web 2.0 parking”, where Demand Media seems to be the [... (Read on Source)
Startups class of '06: Where are they now?
(InfoWorld) - In 2006, InfoWorld uncovered 15 startups that emerged after the nuclear winter that followed the dot-com bust with cool, useful technologies. Well, another year has brought a new crop of startup darlings, such as the companies we're profiling each day in May for our Month of Enterprise Startups (MOES) feature. But MOES got us thinking about last year's startups. In the year that has followed, how have these innovators fared?
To find out, we went back to the startups we profiled last year and got an update on how the last twelve months have treated them: which are still standing, which got bought, and which are gasping for air. Here's a look at what a few of the companies we profiled last year are up to.
Fortify Software's technology helps IT developers identify security threats during application development and patch executable code on the fly to prevent malicious exploitation. In the last year, this "startup" has already acquired another company, Secure Software, and expanded its product line to include a tool to test executable code for security vulnerabilities. The Fortify Tracer tool is in many ways a repurposing of the on-the-fly patching tool Fortify Defend, CEO John Jack notes, with the key difference that it reports the vulnerabilities to the IT staff and helps narrow where the problems may be to help instrument defenses until the code can be rewritten or replaced with a more secure version.
Open source data integration vendor Jitterbit has continued to enhance its tools, which let business analysts create their own applications by dragging and dropping Web services and various data sources. Two new versions of Jitterbit's software released in the past year extend support to LDAP directories and Web services hosted within a company, as well as to plug-ins so users and third parties can add their own functionality (for example, support for proprietary compression and decompression). Going forward, the company expects to increase support for applications and data sources used by larger enterprises, notes CEO Sharam Sasson. The company continues to work on providing a way for users to share the workflows they create with others. That's a feature that is in the Jitterbit Server engine, but not exposed to users because the company is still working on an appropriate interface to that capability, Sasson says.
Splunk, the IT data search engine, has seen its users expand the type of logging and analysis for which the company's IT operations logging software is used. Splunk now does compliance and security logging. In retrospect, says CEO Michael Baum, use across areas makes sense as it lets IT use one technology to monitor and analyze a variety of activities that need to be audited. This adoption of Splunk?s technology beyond its original mission caused the company to increase the audit controls over the logs, such as logging all alerts resulting from logging and all searches made, as well as signing the logs to prove they were not tampered with, notes Baum.
But not all the action has been about logging. The company has added new reporting and analysis tools to help users deal with the huge amount of information that Splunk captures ? a user challenge that Baum now realizes his company underestimated. Although users always could load the log data to other tools for analysis, that?s proven to be an approach users don?t like. ?IT people don?t want to load the data into OLAP or something so they can analyze it,? Baum says. The result: Splunk now does all that for you.
Sxip Interactive now provides identity management services for the Salesforce.com and Google Apps SaaS (software as a service) platforms, extending its reach from the previous focus on individual ASPs (application service providers). Sxip?s appliance-delivered technology integrates into existing enterprise identity management systems, such as ActiveDirectory, so IT no longer has to manage Salesforce.com or Google Apps identities separately. The company has also merged its Sxip Identity Management protocol into the open source OpenID effort to allow users to have a single identity that can be validated across multiple providers, such as government agencies, online retailers, and their employers. And Sxip is working with VeriSign to bring Microsoft?s Windows CardSpace identity manager into the fold. CEO Dick Hardt says that, as a result, Microsoft will support the Sxip/OpenID protocol in future products.
Zenprise has taken its technology for automating Microsoft Exchange troubleshooting into the mobile space, with similar a version that automatically troubleshoots BlackBerry Enterprise Server operations. (Zimbra likewise has extended its AJAX-based e-mail platform to support interaction with a variety of mobile devices.) The underlying troubleshooting technology can be applied to almost any datacenter systems? interdependencies, such as issues with message queues, performance degradation, and configuration. For now, Zenprise is staying focused on network-related technologies such as Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry Server. After all, the customers tend to be the same, making sales easier for a small company, notes Ahmed Datoo, vice president of marketing.
Not surprisingly, more than one of the companies we profiled in 2006 looked like tasty tidbits to some of the IT giants that roam the hills and dales of Silicon Valley, Route 128, and elsewhere looking for hot new technology.
EMC, through its VMWare subsidiary, bought Akimbi Systems, which had virtualization software that lets developers easily create virtual test bed environments, saving the labor and expense of traditional testing environments. Akimbi?s tool is now called VMWare Lab Manager. But it has lost its support for Microsoft and Xen virtual machines, making it a less interesting product than it used to be.
Google acquired JotSpot, which provided wiki-based applets that users could modify and extend to create spreadsheets, calendars, and galleries. Now that JotSpot is in the belly of the GooglePlex, Google is mum on its plans and is taking no new JotSpot customers. The company has said that the JotSpot technology fits within its plans for Google?s own consumer-oriented, Web-based editing and spreadsheet tool and sharing-oriented tools such as online portfolios, family sites, and class reunion sites.
As for the other companies we profiled? Most continue to do what they were doing a year ago, with a few clearly focused on building up their internal managerial and sales talent to help make the transition from startup to established provider. For example, ActiveGrid, brought in a new CEO and a new VP of marketing to focus on growth, while founder and original CEO Peter Yared moved to the CTO role to focus on the AJAX-oriented development environment?s technology base.
XenSource brought in a slew of managers from companies such as Intel, Microsoft, and Veritas Software while ?hardening? the virtualization technology?s support for Windows to run datacenter applications better. Similarly, network access control appliance vendor ConSentry Networks has bolstered its marketing and distribution efforts while also upgrading its product?s capabilities somewhat.
All in all, not a bad report card.
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IBM Information On Demand 2006
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Corcoran and McGrath concerns for Tipp
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AMD cuts prices on its desktop CPUs
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The first date is a chance for many things to go wrong
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EW Reviews SF/F
Issue #949/#950 (August 24, 2007) of Entertainment Weekly offers some brief reviews of science fiction and fantasy books. Here's a snippet... Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson For Fans of... The original Dune novels by Herbert's late father, Frank. Bottom Line: After slogging through a desert's worth of rote Star Wars isms ... (Read on Source)
Herbalife Wants Product Testing Data Excluded
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Yahoo said in a statement,"Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo!, even at the price range it had previously suggested."
Prince of Persia Media Shows Encroaching Dark
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Evening Reading
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Avril Lavigne to perform in Macau this September
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Green Gear isn't a Priority for Business, Survey Shows
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Go From A2B on an Electric Bike, Praying the Battery Doesn't Die
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Cooper Lighting emergency lights recalled
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Clinton to Take Stage in Praise of Obama's Candidacy
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Hosting Provider Flux Services, Inc. Selected to Receive Top Web Host Award from WebHostDir.com
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Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/09/prweb1274104.htm
LINX Reduces Peering Fees
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Best Buy Will Acquire Napster for $121 Million (NewsFactor)
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EFF Sues NSA, President Bush, and Vice President Cheney to Stop Illegal Surveillance
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CNET News Daily Podcast: Universal Music wants its own video portal
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Apple Threatens iTunes Shutdown if Royalty Increase is Pushed Through
"Apple has threatened to shut down the iTunes music store if an obscure three-person board appointed by the Librarian of Congress increase the royalties paid to publishers and songwriters by six cents per song. The Copyright Royalty Board is scheduled to hand down its decision on these rates Thursday. As part of their general muscle-flexing of late, music publishers asked the board to increase royalties paid to publishers and songwriters from 9 cents to 15 cents per track. Apple -- which has mightily resisted tampering in any way with its 99 cent price point for tracks -- said that if the rate hike goes through and the labels refuse to absorb the entire resulting increase, the iTunes music store will become unprofitable."
If you put music on your Windows Mobile phone, your MP3 player, or your Zune, and you ever purchase that music from iTunes, this is news you'll want to know about. I'm not personally a big fan of iTunes, but I certainly support their stance in resisting this move. They've sold several billion songs, largely the 99 cent purchase price of an iTunes song is a reasonable alternative to piracy. If you give people a chance to be honest, they will - iTunes proved that. According to this Wired article, Apple pays artists and labels 65 to 70 cents per song, 9 cents of which the artist or studio is paying to the publishers. It seems to me that if this law were to pass, the increased rates should come from the artist/label end - after all, without the songwriter that created the song in the first place, they'd have nothing in the first place.
It will be interesting to watch how this plays out - the music industry has been undermining Apple and iTunes lately, offering DRM-free MP3s to Amazon while denying them to Apple. Steve Jobs isn't known for compromising (what with that huge ego and all), so this will be interesting to watch. And if this law does pass, what will happen to Amazon's MP3 store? Or Rhapsody's MP3 store? Will we see $1.10 pricing there (you just know they'd round up), or will they too shut down? This could have some dire consequences for online music stores, who all operate at razor-thin profit margins as it is. Could this kill or cripple the entire industry? The music companies would prefer to have us all buying CDs anyway, right?
Encoding Regular Emails Into SPAM - Net Humor
Why just say what you mean, when you can be convoluted and misleading? ;)
Symbian's "Victory" Makes Software Patentable in UK
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Virus prompts Asus to recall Japanese Eee Box PCs
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Singularity Summit: Brainy Robots Could Lead to Longer Unemployment Lines
Report: Braves, Friars near Peavy deal - MLB.com
 Bleacher Report | Report: Braves, Friars near Peavy deal MLB.com - By Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com The Padres are on the verge of trading All-Star right-hander Jake Peavy to the Braves, CBS Sportsline. Padres reportedly close to asking for Peavy's OK on trade Creeping Ever Closer |
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