Mobile phones play an important role in Microsoft’s software-plus-services vision, CEO Steve Ballmer told the CTIA show in San Francisco today. Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service Tuesday, October 23, 2007 3:00 PM PDT Mobile phones play an important role in Microsoft’s software plus services vision, CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday. 

Microsoft Corp.’s software strategy a few years ago revolved around software that was either embedded on devices or burned onto CDs and shipped to users, he said. Today, however, software works in tandem with the Internet, which can back up and update the software. “There’s no better way then the cell networks of the world to make this model happen,” he said, speaking during the opening presentation at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco. He envisions a time when software is wirelessly updated and works in tandem with services hosted on the Internet. 

But the software plus services concept won’t be different for the PC and the mobile phone, he said. At the top of Microsoft’s innovation agenda is unifying a variety of devices and applications. Microsoft is focused on enabling developers to create single applications that take advantage of phones, desktop computers, the enterprise environment and the online environment, he said. Microsoft is enabling that in part by offering a consistent platform that developers can use to create applications for the PC and mobile phones. For example, a developer can write a thin client for mobile phones using HTML, Ajax and in the future Silverlight. Microsoft’s .Net and Visual Studio can be used to write rich applications for mobile phones. Microsoft also offers a compact version of SQL so that developers can write applications for Windows Mobile phones for database manipulation. 

The phone is particularly important in achieving Microsoft’s unified view, he said. “The PC is the most powerful device, but the phone is the most popular,” he said. Particularly in the developing world where PC’s may be cost prohibitive, cell phones may be more widespread. Microsoft is focused on providing software for partners to use and it is working carefully not to compete with them, he said. Unlike Google Inc., Microsoft won’t be participating in the upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction. “What would it buy us to own a piece of spectrum?” he said. “It would probably do a lot to alienate the telecom industry. It does not do a lot to advance our goal which is to take some exciting technology and spread it.” 

Windows Mobile is a big opportunity financially for Microsoft from two perspectives, he said. If Windows Mobile runs hundreds of millions of devices, that’s a great business for Microsoft, he said. “Also, I don’t think we can serve our customers’ broad desire to bring together desktops, devices, enterprise and online if we ignore the mobile area,” he said. Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138831-c,cellphones/article.html 

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By Chris Robertson

If you’re the owner of a small- to medium-sized business, you may have toyed with the idea of outsourcing your custom software development. You may have even taken the plunge and hired offshore freelancers in an attempt to get your information technology needs met while saving money. Unfortunately, many business owners who have tried outsourcing software development have had negative experiences. There may have been language barriers, insurmountable time zone differences, mismatched skill sets, or missed deadlines that caused innumerable headaches and cost overruns. As one executive ruefully admitted, “We were penny wise and pound foolish.”

It’s two years later, and the same executive now understands the secret to successfully outsourcing software development - and is glad he didn’t give up after the first attempts at outsourcing failed so badly. When did the tide turn? When he started using an offshore software development company that, in essence, acted as an expediter. In other words, he contracts with a German company that in turn works with IT professionals and companies around the world to produce applications that are tailor made to his specifications. Because the German company can call on experienced IT professionals worldwide, it can perform agile software development without breaking a sweat.

In turn, the German company carefully cultivates relationships with professionals who have a depth of knowledge in their particular specialty. In this way, the German company doesn’t have a large staff with superficial knowledge, but rather can draw on the expertise necessary for individual projects. At the same time, it ultimately controls all aspects of each project, and ensures that deadlines and quality standards are met. The executive touted the company he worked with as “forming the bridge between our company and the technical staff that develop our software.” By using a company with an efficient infrastructure, he is able to avoid the typical problems and risks associated with offshore projects - problems that he had experienced in past years. He appreciates that the German company can fulfill virtually any request, whether it is for consulting and training, business analysis, systems architecture, software development, or design. He is also thankful that he doesn’t have to deal with the individual programmers and that he doesn’t have to find someone to stitch all of the pieces together. “Without exception, we receive software that has been extensively tested, and is bug-free and ready to deploy,” he said. “We get all of the benefits of offshore software development without any of the hassles.”Unless you have a large IT department that can design the custom software that your enterprise needs - and today’s business environment makes that impractical for most companies - you have to rely on people outside of your company. The most cost-efficient and effective way to accomplish this is through a fast and reliable offshore software development company that will provide you with a turnkey product that has been extensively tested. 

Source: http://www.qualityfreearticles.com/articledetail.php?artid=58356&catid=1

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Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:13am EDT By Eric Auchard SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - StumbleUpon, a fast rising Web search site bought by eBay Inc in May, is moving beyond automated Web discovery to offer a novel way to see what friends find useful or interesting on the Web. 

StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com), which has attracted 3.7 million consumers to its easy-to-use “thumbs up/thumbs down” ratings of Web sites and videos, said on Monday it plans to introduce a new SearchReviews feature on major Web sites. SearchReviews are available to StumbleUpon users who have downloaded and installed the company’s toolbar inside their Web browser.

They will start seeing tiny colored icons alongside links their friends have rated. These ratings will begin running on nine of the Web’s most popular Web sites on Tuesday, including any links friends have reviewed on search sites from Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL or Ask. They also will appear on Google News, Yahoo News, Flickr photos, the Wikipedia online encyclopedia and YouTube videos. 

 “Now you can have a lot of people who have said, ‘This is a good page,’ as opposed to just ranking the most popular pages,” Co-founder and chief architect Garrett Camp said. “You can save a lot of time finding interesting things lower down a page.” 

 The review feature will show up on Tuesday to users of the StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) toolbar. Since its founding by Canadian computer science graduate students six years ago, StumbleUpon users have rated some 13 million sites.   “If this catches on and Search Reviews can achieve critical mass, this could change what constitutes popularity on the Web and how we measure it,” said Carla Thompson, a product analyst at technology research group Guidewire Group.  

 “But StumbleUpon would have to achieve a much larger base of users before it affects what’s popular or not on YouTube.”   The ratings system works to personalize the “one size fits all” quality of discovering interesting links on the Web. Star ratings appear next to Web links or videos, along with icons showing which of one’s friends, by name, have rated the site. 

   “We have this database tied to a social network that no one else really has,” Camp said. “In the future, you can imagine almost any major Web page would have StumbleUpon Reviews.”  SearchReviews takes advantage of the ratings that users of the StumbleUpon contribute simply by clicking a button to give a particular site a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rating.

 With millions of users already contributing ratings, the utility of these ratings grow the more one’s friends use the service.  In effect, SearchReviews layers their own ratings over existing popular sites, with more sites to be added based on consumer demand, Camp said. The colorful but unobtrusive ratings symbols may encourage the user to choose links they wouldn’t consider based on their friends evaluations. 

   To identify their friends, StumbleUpon asks them to allow StumbleUpon to troll through their online address books such as Outlook or Yahoo or Microsoft or Yahoo e-mail to locate other StumbleUpon users. Privacy is assured, company officials said.  Thompson said there is nothing illegal about overlaying additional information onto existing Web sites. Technically speaking, StumbleUpon inserts the additional information in the underlying Web page code with no special effort from users. 

  The StumbleUpon toolbar is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox. EBay has elected to continue to operate StumbleUpon as a separate company and appears in no rush to integrate the start-up it acquired for $75 million into eBay’s auctions, payments and communications businesses.  Eventually, the 19-person company is looking to weave its review features into existing eBay services such as auctions or Skype, its Web-based phone calling service, officials said.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN2230043720071023?pageNumber=2  

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Oafshore Software Development Company provides various outsourcing services. It includes outsourcing of different software solutions, application services, network outsourcing services for large number of companies including finance, real estate, insurance, retail and others maximizing the value delivered to the customers through a diversified, adaptable and synergetic business and service model. The focused team has been working on variety of process enhancement, document management and organizational intranet projects. 

Offshore Software Development has emerged as one of the most successful business strategies in today’s competitive world. Selecting the right Company for Offshore outsourcing is crucial in view of the profit generating and development of your business. Offshore Software Development, being a significant part of Offshore IT Outsourcing market facilitates the companies to focus on their core activities while at the same time providing them with a means of fulfilling their business requirements and that too in a cost effective manner. It has thus, become a necessary strategic tool for companies to gain the competitive advantage by staying ahead in their own market in ways different than their competitors.  Offshore Software Development services covers software and web solution as well as testing and application development.

Offshore outsourcing is a competent way to be ahead of your rival in competitive world. Depending on complexity of a project, and customer’s goals, Offshore Outsourcing is done for user documentation preparation, extended technical documentation development, extra testing, etc. Therefore flexibility, and the manner in which each project is treated as per the specific requirements is the matter of concern.  Some of the Software development services for outsourcing are - -Web and Client Server Technology -Simple to Complex Database Management -Systems Integration -Software Consultancy -Data porting, Data mining and Migration -Application Maintenance -Software Testing -Inventory Management Tools -Programming in .NET, JAVA and J2EE  Outsourcing software development has emerged as a recent trend in business.

There are various factors which needs to be considered while deciding the kinds of software to be hired. There are myriad advantages of offshore software development. Access to global expertise can be achieved through offshoring in a very cost effective manner. It can also provide with ways of achieving business goals in a very speedy and efficient way. Article By Smita Mathur   Source: http://software.ivertech.com/_ivertechArticle8198_OffshoreSoftwareDevelopmentOutsourcingakeyinbusiness.htm

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In a marriage made in cyberspace if not in heaven, MySpaceIM with Skype will allow users of both services to call and IM each other at will.

By W. David Gardner
InformationWeek
October 17, 2007 03:00 PM

In a marriage made in cyberspace if not in heaven, MySpace and Skype said their users will be able to talk to each other free of charge starting in November.

 On Wednesday, News Corporation’s MySpace and eBay (NSDQ: EBAY)’s Skype announced the hook-up that will enable MySpace users to use Skype’s VoIP service. Users also will be able to communicate through their respective instant messaging services.

There is probably minimal overlap among Skype’s 220 million registered users and MySpace’s 110 million monthly users, but the potential is there — particularly for teenage MySpace users, who may want to call their friends, often impulsively.

The two user bases are somewhat different: MySpace has attracted users — most of them in the U.S. — in a social meeting context, while Skype users — most of them outside the U.S. — use the VoIP service in a more functional manner to stay in phone touch with established friends and relatives. Both services have enjoyed phenomenal growth. 

MySpaceIM with Skype will enable users to place free Skype calls and send IM messages to MySpace and Skype users.

The companies noted that revenue-producing features of Skype including voice mail and call forwarding will be offered. Other revenue-producing services including SkypeIn and SkypeOut will also be available in November. The companies have declined to break out revenue sharing figures. 

Skype will be added to MySpace’s IM client, which MySpace said is currently the world’s fastest-growing IM platform; some 25 million users have signed up for the MySpace IM feature, the firm said. 

 The companies said MySpace with Skype will use the personal privacy settings already in use on MySpace. Users can block any MySpaceIM with a Skype user at any time and can pre-screen incoming callers on an “incoming call window.”   

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202403873 

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By MATT RICHTEL 

Published: October 18, 2007 

Apple is opening up the iPhone — at least partly.

After engendering frustration from some customers and software makers, Apple has changed its policy to encourage independent developers to build programs for use on the iPhone.

Apple said that in February it would make available a developer’s kit, which would allow independent software makers to more easily create mobile games, navigation systems, screen-shot capture programs and other tools.

Several weeks ago, Apple released an over-the-air update to the iPhone that erased programs made by independent developers and caused some phones to freeze up.

The company is not changing a policy that forbids users from unlocking the iPhone to use it with carriers other than AT&T,

Apple said. Steven P. Jobs, the company’s chief executive, has said he wanted to keep some control over the iPhone’s systems, consistent with Apple’s customary practices, to preserve the user experience. But critics have said Apple has done so to a fault.

Apple realized that “it’s time to stop this silly race to lock the iPhone because it’s a lost battle,” said Cyril Houri, the chief executive of Mexens Technology, maker of Navizon, a navigation system for mobile phones that, he said, 120,000 iPhone users had downloaded since Sept. 19.

The introduction of the developer’s kit “is a positive development,” Mr. Houri said.  In a letter posted on the Apple Web site, Mr. Jobs wrote that the company was seeking to balance the benefits of encouraging development of new software with protecting the phone from software bugs and malicious attacks. 

“Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones — this is simply not true,” he wrote. He added that given the advanced nature of the iPhone, “it will be a highly visible target.” “We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third-party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones,” he wrote.  Michael McGuire, an analyst who follows Apple for Gartner, a market research firm, said that the developer kit came as little surprise and that Apple probably had planned one all along.Mr. McGuire said the delay probably was wise, however, because it would have been difficult for Apple and AT&T, its exclusive telecommunications partner, to introduce the phone and control its quality while also managing relationships with independent software developers.He also said the fact that software developers had been developing products without cooperation from Apple and AT&T made the two companies realize that preventing the creation of independent software “was impossible to stop.” Apple’s effort to wall off the iPhone from developers, and to prevent its unlocking, has led to a cat-and-mouse game with developers and hackers. Advocates of unlocking the iPhone and creating programs for it assert that they paid for the device and it belongs to them, not to Apple.

“If Apple does something where they remove everything I did on it, I have a feeling that Apple is kindly lending me a phone to make phone calls,” said Mr. Houri, the executive from Mexens Technology.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/technology/18apple.html?ref=business 

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