|
|
Linux
Meets Wal-Mart; May Upset Microsoft's Windows Media Cart Linux, the open source operating system, is now available to the masses. Mega-retailer Wal-Mart is selling a line of hefty PCs on its Walmart.com site at http://www.lindows.com/ walmart. Linux comes in many flavors, called distributions, and the one gracing the Wal-Mart PCs is called LindowsOS, a special hybrid of Linux and Windows that can run Windows software. It's from software developer Lindows.com Inc. Wine, an open source project that seeks to reverse-engineer the core foundation of Microsoft Windows, is used in LindowsOS to provide the support for Windows applications. The PCs are made by Microtel Computer Systems, a custom Linux server maker. Prices start at $299 for an 850MHz AMD Duron machine with 128MB RAM and a 10GB hard drive, and $599 for a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 with 256MB RAM and a 40GB hard drive. None of the machines come with a monitor. A 15-inch Microtel monitor costs an additional $119. The Microtel PCs are not wimps. Even the low-priced Duron machine is fast enough to decode full-screen digital video in real-time. Most of the PCs have a network interface card (NIC) already installed and tested, making them broadband-ready, so the Lindows users should be online downloading music and movies in no time via high-speed connections. The rock-bottom PC prices appear to be leaving little room for $300 software licenses. Even Dell, Microsoft's good buddy, is offering an entry-level PC for $599 called the SmartStep 150D that comes with WordPerfect instead of Microsoft Office. The SmartStep has a 1.2GHz Celeron processor, 128MB of RAM, a 20GB hard drive, PC speakers, a 15" monitor and a modem, but no pre-installed NIC for a high-speed broadband connection. The shrink-wrapped version of Lindows is still in beta, but the company says it has a particular strain that has been optimized specifically for the Microtel PCs. Lindows is trying to overthrow Microsoft's reign over the desktop by offering an OS that is largely compatible with Windows but can run Linux software natively. Lindows' ability to run Windows applications is a vital feature, because it acts as a sort of reverse-compatibility. One of the reasons ruling technology providers like Microsoft and Intel have maintained their dominance is that they make sure future products will run software from the past. Even today, Windows can still run DOS programs and the fastest Pentium can execute an 8088 binary. Users of other operating systems like Macintosh and the late BeOS basically have to join a religious cult. Using an alternate OS requires total pure dedication. To make the conversion, users must denounce their old operating system, leave their favorite applications and maybe even friends and family behind, and never look back. But if Lindows users start switching to native Linux applications like Sun's StarOffice instead of Microsoft's highly profitable Office, Microsoft's applecart could really be upset. It would also be a blessing for Internet content providers trying to reach digital media consumers. An oft-repeated complaint from content providers is that there is no standard for streaming video. Providers have to cobble together a lousy JavaScript pop-up window that is supposed to unify the various streaming clients into one space. But that also means licensing streaming servers and encoding software from several vendors - often sites will have multiple versions of files encoded in Microsoft's Windows Media, RealNetworks' RealAudio and RealVideo and Apple's QuickTime. Mplayer, an open source digital media application for Linux, unites these standards into a single player. The software uses Microsoft codec binaries to natively play any conceivable media format. It's basically a universal media player for Linux and is the only player for any platform that can play both RealMedia and Windows Media formats. Microsoft and rivals RealNetworks and Apple drool over the thought of controlling the streaming technology from the encoder to server to client, but each has a large enough market share to make that outcome unlikely anytime soon. The standoff is irritating consumers and content providers, who just want a single standard that works every time, no fuss involved and would make it unnecessary to select whether you want to Microsoft's Windows Media or Real's RealPlayer each time you get a web page that offers audio or video. A video compression format called MPEG-4 is supposed to fix the problem, but content owners have balked at MPEG-4's licenses terms, set by MPEG LA, the legal muscle that backs patent owners who contributed to MPEG specifications. MPEG LA wants content owners to pay 25 cents per encoder or decoder, plus an additional two cents for every hour of for-profit use. If streaming media developers reject MPEG-4, Microsoft could rule the roost. The company says its Windows Media format is superior and sees no reason to support the standard. In a sense, MPEG-4 competes directly with Windows Media. The Windows Media player supports a pluggable codec system that can bring in third-party compression systems. Besides, the player is on nearly every Windows desktop across the globe. Mplayer is a good challenge for Microsoft's media player. Unlike Microsoft's player, Mplayer is open source, making it an open standard. Content providers can be sure that any format they choose will work. Although LindowsOS is supposed to be able to run most common Windows applications, the LindowsOS is 100% compatible with all Linux apps. Its default browser is Konqueror, a project of the KDE Linux desktop effort. LindowsOS uses KDE, a collection of applications and foundation UI widgetry, for its desktop environment. In addition to the Wal-Mart deal, Lindows has launched a new service, called Click-N-Run. The service costs $99 a year and is designed to offer customers a way to buy software online. Currently there are 151 digital media applications available on the service. The idea is that consumers can buy an application online, download it over the Internet and install it with a single mouse click. The service is similar to Ximian, which automates software updates for the Gnome Unix desktop. The company dodged questions on how well Windows applications install and run under Lindows. At this point Lindows appears to be little more than a glorified Linux distribution. Other Wine-based products like CrossOver Office from CodeWeavers are slowly making Linux in general more Windows friendly. CrossOver Office is specifically focused on getting Microsoft applications to install and run properly on Wine. The product works with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and Power-Point and IBM Lotus Notes. CrossOver has a Wine-based digital media product on the market as well. It offers consumers a way to run the actual Windows Media player under Linux. Mandrake, a desktop-oriented
Linux distribution, says it's about to close a deal with
Microtel and expects to see the PCs on Walmart.com as
well. Back
to Headlines
Bootleg
CDs Slowed Sales A wave of bootleg CDs for a popular artist were on streets before his CD was released, and the piracy appears to have slowed sales. Early this month, rapper Eminem's latest CD hit record stores. But weeks before it was on shelves, bootleg copies were widely available - no one's really saying publicly how this happened. According to online music database Gracenote, the record had become the second-most-played CD in computer drives before it was even released. Gracenote's database works by correlating the number of CD tracks and their length to essentially give each track a unique identifier in the Gracenote database. Various programs used for playing CDs on computers access the database to display the current track name. Gracenote is used by CD-ripping software to automatically name MP3s as they're encoded from a CD as well. Eminem's new CD holds the top spot on the Gracenote database and is the top selling album, according to the Billboard 200 chart. The CD is obviously popular. Unfortunately, the bootlegging that occurred before its released seems to have negatively affected sales. According to media measurement firm Nielsen SoundScan, Eminem's 2000 release, "The Marshall Mathers LP," sold 1.8 million copies the first week it was on shelves. Compared with that figure, his latest release, "The Eminem Show," paints a bleak picture: it only sold 285,000 copies in its first week. It did rally in its second and third weeks, selling 1.3 million and 809,000 copies respectively. Back in 2000, "Marshall Mathers" sold 794,000 in its second week and 599,000 in its third week out. Regardless of the rally, sales of "The Eminem Show" are still behind sales of the rapper's previous release by some 800,000 copies. (To view the chart go to http://www.g2-news.com/eminem.html) Last year the music industry faced a sales slump, with revenue down from $14.3 billion in 2000 to $13.7 billion in 2001 - a 4.1% drop. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) CEO Hilary Rosen said piracy was "a large factor" behind the drop, with most of the loss coming from a 2.3% drop in CD sales. But a 2.3% drop in CD sales doesn't come close to quantifying the 800,000-unit sales slip - a 25% difference - from Eminem's 2000 release to his new one. The numbers point to piracy, even though Gracenote's pre-release Eminem numbers don't necessarily track P2P and MP3 piracy. Most likely, the numbers come from mass-produced bootlegs or friends making copies of the CD for friends. Bootleg copies of the CD were reportedly available for $5 from wise guys on city streets before the record was on shelves. Many of the Gracenote hits could have come from these bootleg copies. These sales are especially damaging to the record industry, since each bootleg purchase directly replaces a legitimate one. The sales of pirated music albums in the form of CD-Rs rose 50% in 2001 to an estimated 950 million disks, according to a report released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a music industry trade group. The IFPI estimates that the total black market revenue from the disks was $4.3 billion, up slightly from $4.2 billion the year before. The Feds seized 2.8 million bootlegs in 2001, compared to 1.6 million in 2000. Twenty percent of Americans, or 40 million people, claim to have downloaded music from a P2P service, according to a report by research firm IpsosReid. The report finds that 25% of Americans own CD burners as well. Out of the music downloaders, 54% say they own CD burners. CD burners grow cheaper every year, with some already selling for as little as $35. Since the computer technology required to mass-produce CD-Rs gets cheaper every year as well, the recording industry's vulnerability to bootlegging will only get worse. It's past experiments with CD copy protection, such as Midbar Tech's Cactus Data Shield, have done little to curb copy protection and have only led to consumer outrage. Perhaps, to help save itself,
the recording industry needs to embrace and promote new
formats such as Dataplay's mini-disks with digital rights
management (DRM) functionality that can prevent unauthorized
copies from being made, while allowing music owners to legally
make personal backups and share a few copies with
friends. Back
to Headlines
Labels Sued for Selling Copy-Protected CDs The five major record labels have been sued for selling copy-protected CDs. The class-action suit charges the CDs are defective and should be either banned or forced to carry warning labels. The suit was filed on behalf of California consumers in the Los Angeles Superior Court by class-action sharp shooters from the legal firm Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach. The suit is the first of its kind but marks the growing criticism of the anti-piracy technique from both consumers and technology manufacturers. Record labels are experimenting with CD copy-protection technology, such as the stuff made by Midbar Tech. By deviating from standard CD data formats, the protection can exploit minor differences between a CD-ROM drive and a dedicated music CD player - rendering the disk useless in most computer CD drives. The protection uses bogus data to confuse a CD-ROM drive. Nearly all music CD players are equipped with scratch-detection technology that ignores the bad data and plays the CD normally. The copy-protection technique breaks the audio CD format standard, which confuses computer drives. The suit claims that the disks are defective because the copy-protected disks deviate from established standards. The disks have been badmouthed by consumer electronics maker Philips, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Representative Rick Boucher (D - Virginia). Philips, which owns the patent for CD standards, has made it clear that it is opposed to copy-protected CDs and says it's considering withholding licenses for them. Back in January, CEA president Gary Shapiro said the association endorses a letter sent by Boucher to the recording industry, which says copy-protected CDs might be illegal. According to Boucher, copy-protected CDs take away consumers' basic right to make personal back-ups under the fair use privilege of copyright law. An engineer from a major CD and DVD drive manufacturing house has said he expects his company and the drive industry as a whole to make CD-ROM drives that can read - and therefore crack - the kind of copy protection used on certain music CDs. The engineer said that if copy-protected music CDs proliferate, demand would drive development of units that can read the copy-protected disks. He said his company does significant tests to make sure their drives will read most disks on the market. Naturally, he concluded, if a crop of popular CDs emerge that are incompatible with the company's current line of products, the company will make a new line of drives compatible with the disks. Today, standard CD-ROM drives go for $17 and simple music CD players cost $22, so the added expense of a computer drive that can read copy-protected CDs shouldn't be more than a few bucks. CD copy protection is facing
challenges in the low-tech world as well. German technology
magazine Tech Online has published instructions that explain
how to defeat CD copy protection with a felt-tipped pen.
Readers have reported they've successfully duplicated a
copy-protected CD after running a pen around its
rim. Back
to Headlines
Loudcloud To Become Opsware; Sells Hosting Biz to EDS Managed services provider Loudcloud is selling its managed services business to EDS and transforming into an enterprise software company. EDS will pay $63.5 million for the business. Loudcloud has said it anticipated FY 2003 revenue from the managed services business to be roughly $75 million. The deal gets EDS Loudcloud's web hosting business and some 50 enterprise web-hosting clients. Loudcloud, the brainchild of web-browser phenom Marc Andreessen and other ex-Netscapers, set out in fall 1999 to accelerate Internet business growth and creation and deliver "technology and services high-tech Internet companies need to compete and win." It offered what it called "Smart Cloud" services, third-party services that, when put together and managed by Loudcloud's automation software, were supposed to provide everything an enterprise would need to manage and run its web site - on a hosted basis. Well, that's history. The start-up is changing its name to Ops-ware Inc, adopting the same branding as its Opsware IT automation software, marking its exit from the managed services business. Opsware automates the complete lifecycle of managing servers and business applications. It has been at the heart of Loudcloud's managed services business since the beginning, managing "complex, heterogeneous application environments." The software supports more than 200 technologies including a wide range of operating systems, databases, app servers, security systems and business apps. The company says that enterprise customers choose Loudcloud to manage their e-business operations largely due to the advantages of Opsware. Now that it's a software company, Loudcloud will be offering the software system to enterprises, government agencies and service providers for internal corporate use. In addition to shelling out $63.5 million for the managed services business, EDS will also be licensing Opsware in a deal that will net Loudcloud $52 million over three years. Initially EDS will deploy Opsware as the foundation for widespread automation of service delivery and application management within its managed web hosting business and later throughout its global network of 50k servers in 14 major data centers and 140 client-owned and regional data centers. EDS expects to generate over $100 million in savings through the deployment of Opsware. "We have seen strong demand from Fortune 2000 customers asking to use Opsware internally to achieve IT cost savings and efficiency gains. The EDS licensing agreement further validates the technology and the urgent need for IT automation to drive down costs," says Loudcloud co-founder and CEO Ben Horowitz. The acquisition is expected to close in September. It's expected to be neutral to EDS' earnings in 2002 and accretive in 2003. In addition to losing 140
employees that will transition to EDS, Loudcloud is laying off
roughly the same number, leaving the new Opsware with about
100 people. The Opsware management team won't change and the
company will remain headquartered in Silicon
Valley. Back
to Headlines
Intel Exits Hosting; Will Take $100m Charge Intel is pulling the plug on its Intel Online Services Inc web hosting business and will take a pre-tax charge of $100 million in its current quarter ending June 30. The charge is related to the write-down of capital assets and other costs associated with phasing out the hosting business. Intel did not disclose the charge in its mid-quarter update of June 6. In addition to hosting, Intel Online Services also provides storage, security, content distribution, application management, business continuity and managed mail services. "While IOS has been successful in attracting new customers, market trends and financial projections for the hosting services industry led us to today's decision," Intel Online Services president Dalibor Vrsalovic said. Set up in September 1999, at the height of the dot.com boom, Intel Online Services has eight data centers spread over the US, Europe and Asia Pacific. The data centers are located in Seoul, Sydney, Mumbai, Beijing, Tokyo, Santa Clara, California, Chantilly, Virginia and Reading, England. Intel Online Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel. An Intel spokeswoman declined to disclose the customer base, revenues or the financial performance of the hosting unit. However, at the time the business was set up, Intel said it would spend $1 billion on setting up the data centers. Intel said Tuesday it had stopped accepting new customers but will continue to provide services to existing customers over the next 12 months to enable them to transition to other service providers. Intel Online Services had signed up several marquee customers. Initial customers included Citigroup, NEC and the Excite@ Home Shopping Service. In April, eBay said it would host a portion of its operations with Intel Online Services. The Intel spokeswoman said the unit currently has several hundred employees. It's not clear if there will be any layoffs related to the winding down of the business. Some of the employees are expected to be redeployed to Intel's IT organization. Intel Online Service is the second prominent online venture from Intel to fold. Two years back, Pandesic, the company's joint venture with SAP, folded after failing "to see a timely road to profitability." Pandesic provided a low-cost hosted e-commerce service to businesses. The winding down of Intel
Online Services reveals the challenges that successful
companies like Intel and Microsoft face when they venture out
of their core businesses. Back
to Headlines
IM Networks Tunes into Rhapsody Internet audio technology provider IM Networks is offering its users a 30-day trial to Rhapsody, a music-on-demand service from digital music service provider Listen.com. IM Networks sells an Internet radio technology called IM Tuning designed for consumer appliances. Consumer electronics manufacturers can license IM Tuning to offer users a way to tune into hundreds of Internet radio broadcasts without a computer. Manufacturers can either license IM's firmware and integrate it with the device's embedded system, or license IM's hardware spec and add the additional components to the device. IM Radio will work with almost
any Internet streaming format and codec, including Microsoft's
Windows Media Audio and of course MP3. Consumers can tune into
hundreds of hand-selected stations using IM's "Best of
Planet" programming. Users are also free to program more
obscure stations they might discover with IM's online station
search service into the device. IM's most popular station
plays classical music, and is purely Internet based. However,
there are plenty of terrestrial radio station rebroadcasts
that can be heard through IM
Tuner. Back
to Headlines
Ranger Online Rolls Out New File Scouring Service Ranger Online, a three year old, 50-person company, has launched version 2.0 of its Intelligent Scanning (IOS) service. Clients use the IOS service to search PCs and servers worldwide for copyrighted files such as movies, music, books and other publications. It relentlessly patrols the Internet looking directly to the source where the infringement is taking place - web sites, chat rooms, newsgroups, peer-to-peer file-sharing sites and the like. Jeremy Rasmussen, CTO of the San Diego concern, says that version 2.0 improves visualization and speed plus permits the user to drill deeper into the details of a specific case. Customers include government
agencies as well as corporations and organizations like the
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which has used
the service for two years to find illegal copies of
copyrighted movies. Back
to Headlines
FullAudio Gets $13.5m, Closes BMG Licensing Deal Digital music subscription service provider FullAudio has raised $13.5 million in its third round of venture financing. New Enterprise Associates led the round, with William Harris Investors Ventures Fund I, Rocket Ventures, Millennium Technology Ventures, Odyssey Venture Partners, Venture Strategy Partners, Kettle Partners and IDEO Ventures participating as well. In a separate development, FullAudio, which operates a service called MusicNow, has licensed music from major record label BMG. The MusicNow service starts $7.49 a month for 50 songs and goes up to $14.99 a month for 100 songs. MusicNow is integrated with radio station web sites and is marketed to station listeners. Currently, four Clear Channel stations have a MusicNow portal, but FullAudio says 30 will be in play by summer. Music is not streamed from
FullAudio, but is downloaded to the subscriber's hard drive.
It's in Microsoft's Windows Media audio format and is
protected by Microsoft's digital rights management (DRM)
software. Although the music is downloaded rather then
streamed, it is "tethered" to the subscriber's PC -
if the FullAudio subscription runs out, the DRM layer will
prevent the music from being played back. Additionally, the
music can't be moved onto portable devices or burned onto
CDs. Back
to Headlines
Google's Search Appliance Finds Customers In February, search expert Google hopped the firewall and offered a boxed version of its Internet search service called the Google Search Appliance. The venture appears to be a success. The company now claims Boeing, Cisco Systems, PBS.org, National Semiconductor, Sur La Table and University of Florida as customers. The Linux-based Google appliance comes in two versions. The first, a $20,000 Intel-powered 1U rack-mount box called the GB-1001, can index 10GB of data, or about 150,000 documents. It can be administered with a web-based interface or a modem for remote configuration and can handle 60 search queries a minute. The other version is the GB-8008, which has its own enclosure and is made up of 8GB 1001s running in parallel. The monster can index over a million documents and costs $250,000. The appliance can index over
200 different file types including PDF, Word documents and
Postscript files. Users can search for the information they
need via a web browser. Back
to Headlines
400,000 Movies Illegally Downloaded Daily Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) president Jack Valenti says that 400,000-600,000 movies are downloaded illegally each day, according to a report in the Washington Post. The report also said that the MPAA's anti-piracy efforts, based in Encino, California, now take a substantial and growing amount of MPAA resources using software from Ranger Online to scour the Internet looking for copyrighted movies on individual PCs and servers. Other MPAA anti-piracy offices are in Brussels, Hong Kong, Toronto and Mexico City. MPAA actions recently led to a
seizure of servers in the Netherlands, says Valenti. "We
are trying to stem the tide as best as we can. I worry about
the future. Remember, at the height of Napster, 3 billion
songs a month were coming down," he
says. Back
to Headlines
P2P Data Delivery from Bandwiz Bandwiz, a start-up backed by George Soros Private Equity Partners, GE Capital and Giza Venture Capital, is developing a P2P file delivery system for the enterprise. Unlike corporate content delivery networks (CDNs), Bandwiz is purely software-based and only requires a single P2P management server. It doesn't require a bunch of caching servers sprinkled across the WAN. Once the technology is deployed on everyone's workstations across the enterprise, Bandwiz promises no file will be sent over the WAN twice. That means if a bunch of offices scattered across the globe are connected by a WAN and someone in an office needs to grab a file off a server, Bandwiz will check for a copy of the file in the office before grabbing the file from a central server. Bandwiz costs $100,000, plus an additional $1,000 for each additional 100 users. The product is still in beta,
and the company says it has some high-profile companies doing
the testing. It wouldn't name names, saying only that a
"well known" hotel chain and a financial institution
were on the job. Back
to Headlines
Deployment Slipping for RealNetworks According to the latest number
from audience measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatings, consumer
loyalty to Microsoft's Windows Media and RealNetworks'
RealMedia are neck-and-neck, with Microsoft ahead by a few
percentage points. Windows Media is used slightly more in the
office with 28.3% of those surveyed using Real and 27% using
Windows Media. Real is used slightly more at home, with 16.2%
of those surveyed versus 14.4% using Windows Media. Apple's
QuickTime comes in as a distant third, with 7.5% of those
surveyed using it at home and 13.2% using it at work. Windows
Media is, however, gaining ground in MediaMetrix Top 100
Websites, which the research firm says count for 98% of all
web traffic. The study, which was commissioned by Microsoft
and should probably be taken with a grain of salt, found that
Windows Media was present on 34% of the top sites while Real
was present on only 28%. Furthermore, Windows Media grew at a
rate of 9% for fall, 2001 while Real grew at
2%. Back
to Headlines
Burst.com Files Patent & Antitrust Suit Against M'soft Internet streaming firm Burst.com has filed a lawsuit accusing Microsoft of patent infringement and antirust violations. The suit claims that Microsoft's digital video project code named "Corona" uses patents filed by Burst. Corona uses Microsoft's Windows Media format to deliver broadcast quality video-on-demand content over the Internet. Burst claims Microsoft swiped the idea. The company has patents that describe how to send a video stream over the Internet at a "faster-than-real-time rate," store the received stream on the PC's hard drive and then display the content. Microsoft wouldn't comment on
the suit. Back
to Headlines
Toshiba Ships Wireless Digital Media Center Is the PC the hub of digital media like what Apple's Steve Jobs says, or is that task up to a home network appliance? According to Toshiba, it's the job for a network appliance. Toshiba's new Magnia SG20 Wireless Media Center costs $1,399. The Linux-based device can share all sorts of digital media content including Windows Media, MP3s, MPEG movies and JPEG pictures over its 802.11b network. It has two hard drives that can store up to 60GB of data. It has a printer port and seven Ethernet ports so computers and other network appliances can be connected to it. The device can beam music around the home, and even stream music over an Internet connection so consumers can hear their favorite MP3s when they're away from home. However, considering that a PC
can do all this for $399, Toshiba will most likely have to
drop the price, unless consumers find its living-room friendly
cosmetics worth the extra price. PCs can be too loud and ugly
for most living rooms. However, as home networks grow,
consumers are given the option to stash an unsightly PC in the
den, basement or even garage and use the network to bring the
content to them. Back
to Headlines
Internet Music Broadcasters Win Royalty War The US Copyright Office cut by half the proposed royalty that music webcasters will have to pay to 70 cents per song per thousand listeners. In a blow to the record industry, which had requested higher royalties, the Copyright Office rejected an arbitration panel's proposal for a royalty that would have been double. The ruling can be appealed to the Court of Appeals for modification or setting aside. Webcasters said that the originally proposed royalty, retroactive to 1998, would have put them out of business. National Association of
Broadcasters' (NAB) CEO Edward Fritts said the last proposed
rates were so high they could "strangle a fledgling new
service to radio listeners." Back
to Headlines
E-billing software vendor Avolent's CEO Douglas Thompson has left the company. Responding to questions about Thompson's departure, Avolent said it needed a CEO with more enterprise software experience. The San Francisco ISV says that for the last 18 months its primary focus has been on selling enterprise software licenses rather than addressing service bureaus. Avolent's VP of marketing Brian Valente said Thompson was not fired but described his exit as a "mutual decision." It's not clear when exactly Thompson left. He joined the company as CEO in June 1999 after Avolent co-founder Mike Lanza quit over differences with the board on the strategic direction of the company. Avolent has now brought in Doug Roberts as Thompson's replacement. Roberts was previously CEO of Versata, a provider of software and services that automate the business logic and processes that power enterprise applications. Prior to Versata, Roberts was a senior VP at Peregrine Corporation (formerly Harbinger Corporation). Describing Roberts as a "seasoned executive" and "proven leader," Avolent said he would help the company to "deliver superior business results to enterprise customers." Interestingly, there's no mention of Thompson in Avolent's press release naming a new CEO. It's almost as if the company did not have a CEO before Roberts. "It's really about the new guy. It's not about the old guy," an Avolent spokeswoman said. Avolent said there were no other changes in the company's senior management. The company did not respond to questions on its customer base. The seven-year-old outfit,
which offers both B2C and B2B e-billing software, has raised
$115 million in seven rounds. Avolent's backers include Rho
Ventures, Wells Fargo, Columbia Capital and Norwest
Ventures. Back
to Headlines
Postage Increase Good for E-Bills The US Postal Service is raising the cost of a First Class stamp from 34 cents to 37 cents on June 30. This additional cost will be a boon to the consumer e-bill segment, according to the Yankee Group. A recent survey from the analyst firm found that among consumers showing interest in EBPP services, 15% paid bills online to save money on stamps. "In the past we have seen an increase in online billing fueled by growing Internet use, comfort with online financial transactions and even the anthrax mail scare," says Jason Briggs, senior analyst of billing and payment application strategies with the Yankee Group. "We anticipate that the increase in the number of consumers using online billing will continue to soar as the manual costs also rise." Other reasons for paying bills online include convenience of eliminating writing checks (22%), saving time (19%) and viewing bills online and keeping a record of the bill (18%). Yankee found that some 8.9
million households pay bills online and expects this number to
nearly double by 2004. Back
to Headlines
British Telecom's BT Retail arm has chosen online account management software ISV edocs to provide the Internet-based capabilities for its BT Together Online service. BT Together Online lets customers subscribing to a BT Together calling plan manage and service their BT account information online through an "Online Dashboard." edocs' eaDirect is the platform for all the online account management systems and will also manage web-based presentation of information collected from BT's existing billing systems. Three other edocs products are already in place. By implementing an online account management and e-billing infrastructure for BT Together, BT hopes to achieve a "state-of-the-art level of online customer service and benefit from significant operational cost-savings as a result of improved efficiency in bill production and payment processing." In addition to account access
through the Online Dashboard, BT Together Online provides
customers with a paperless billing facility including access
to their BT bill online with a full range of analytical tools,
the ability to manage and personalize the bill online using
the Personal Address book, online customer service support and
exclusive access to offers and future
enhancements. Back
to Headlines
Sony Online Opts for WebCollect GlobalCollect has a new customer for its WebCollect online payment service. Sony Online Entertainment, a leader in massively multiplayer online gaming, is using WebCollect to expand the online payment options available to gamers. WebCollect is an end-to-end real-time processing system for international payments that supports more than 40 countries, 36 payment methods and a dozen languages through a single interface. According to Cindy Armstrong, VP of Sony Online Entertainment, "WebCollect is an excellent service that can do all of the work for us - from billing to processing payments. Also, with WebCollect we are no longer limited to only accepting credit card payments. Now we can process subscription-based orders anywhere in the world in the currency and payment method that our customers choose." Sony Online's EverQuest game series, which uses a subscription-based revenue model, has more than 430,000 subscribers. Online transactions in the US
are typically done by credit card, but the rest of the world
more often uses local payment options such as bank debits,
checks and wire transfers. WebCollect combines these and other
payment methods into one interface to simplify the payment and
collection process. Back
to Headlines
Kyberpass, IBM Team on E-Payments Solution E-security solution provider Kyberpass is working with IBM to offer a fully integrated online trusted e-payments solution for banks that are members of the Identrus consortium. The joint offering is supposed to make it easier for banks and other financial institutions to adopt the standards-based Identrus framework to provide secure solutions to customers using the Eleanor payments specification. Project Eleanor is an Identrus initiative charged with introducing secure, direct B2B payments over the Internet and includes specs for several e-payment options. Under the agreement, Kyberpass will become a key technology provider to IBM's trusted e-payments solution, part of the WebSphere Financial Network solution. Kyberpass has developed a new WebSphere MQ Series interface for its Identrus Compliant Transaction Coordinator that will enable secure routing of all transactions. The Kyberpass TrustPlatform for
the Identrus System is a suite of trust-enabling software
infrastructure products for Identrus member financial
institutions, Express Partners and ASPs. It enables
organizations to take advantage of the Identrus framework
without any development, PKI toolkits or concern for
interoperability issues. Back
to Headlines
Shipping giant UPS has teamed with Internet payment service PayPal to totally integrate the online payment process with digital shipping tools. The new "PayPal Shipping With UPS" service let a buyer or seller complete shipping functions within the PayPal web site. This is supposed to create a more accurate and efficient fulfillment process. The PayPal service automatically sends the payment to the seller at the close of a transaction. The customer shipping information is populated into the shipping label as a one-step process. The seller is instantly paid for the item and receives all of the information necessary to print a shipping label. The buyer then receives an e-mail with a linked tracking number confirming shipment and an expected delivery date. Any PayPal customer can use this feature, letting sellers pay shipping charges via a PayPal virtual debit card. Since UPS bills sellers directly for shipping charges, they don't need to worry about collecting additional money for shipping and buyers don't get overcharged. Before the service, sellers had to arrange for product shipment as a separate transaction and then had to re-enter shipping information, which created a greater margin for error. "This agreement with
PayPal marks the first time that UPS has integrated its
shipping API into a third party's branded product," says
Alan Amling, UPS manager of e-commerce
marketing, Back
to Headlines
Bottomline Helps Waterstone's Get To Next Phase Waterstone's has chosen Bottomline Technologies to deliver the "next stage" of its e-finance strategy. Waterstone's, the largest specialty bookseller in the UK, will install Bottomline's i-Pay BACS (Bankers Automated Clearing Service) to migrate 100,000 annual supplier checks to BACS payments over the next few months. This will save on banking charges, stationery costs and reduce in-house resource requirements. HMV UK, a sister company to Waters-tone's, is already operating on i-Pay BACS. The implementation at Waterstone's will strengthen HMV Group's e-finance strategy going forward, delivering the same payment platform enterprise-wide. "The deployment of the i-Pay solution will deliver Waterstone's significant improvements to our payment processes," says Robert Cocks, financial controller of Waterstone's. "The investment, based on net cost savings, which will be achieved with the solution, will improve processes surrounding weekly and monthly core purchasing and expense ledger check runs. The efficiencies brought by eliminating manual processing alone will save our department roughly two man days a week." Once the integration of i-Pay
with Waterstone's Coda Financials application is complete, the
companies will move onto the next phase, which will involve
e-mailing and faxing 6,000 monthly customer statements to
bring resource and cost efficiencies into other areas of
Waterstone's financial
functions. Back
to Headlines
Wells Fargo, CheckFree Ink New Deal Anew, multi-year contract has Wells Fargo offering CheckFree online banking, e-billing and payment processing services. CheckFree has been providing online banking and e-billing services to Wells Fargo since 1996. This new agreement, which includes monthly revenue commitments, will allow CheckFree to participate in the latest version of Wells Fargo's bill pay service. The CheckFree services will help Wells Fargo offer additional EBPP options alongside those of its other partners including MasterCard RPPS, Metavante and Spectrum. Wells Fargo is a founding backer of Spectrum. The goal is for Wells Fargo to provide a single location where customers can receive their e-bills, set up e-mail alerts, make payments to anyone and generate reports on bills or payments. With the new Online Bill Pay Service, Wells Fargo customers can access all this enhanced functionality through a single sign-on with one user ID and password. The new relationship with CheckFree will give Wells Fargo customers access to CheckFree's network of more than 200 national and regional billers. Wells Fargo claims three
million active online users, nearly a third of whom are using
its services for e-bill presentment and
payment. Back
to Headlines
Pitney Bags Reliant E-Billing Contract Pitney Bowes has landed a contract to provide e-billing services to Minneapolis natural gas distribution concern Reliant Energy Minnegasco. E-billing enrollees from Reliant's base of 700,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers will receive an e-mail notification when a bill is available online for them to view and pay. Reliant will use Pitney's
Digital Document Delivery (D3) software to provide the
e-billing service. Back
to Headlines
Simultaneous Users In Top 4 P2P Networks
06/24/02 FastTrack is a Napster-like P2P file trading service that allows users to exchange copyrighted media files, including music, video and documents. The Billboard 200 is a chart published by Billboard Magazine that tracks the top selling albums for the week. Our chart tracks the number of unique songs from this week's top five Billboard 200 musicians, available for free on the FastTrack P2P network. See http://www.g2news.com/chart.html
for the latest chart Back
to Headlines
Fighting Spam, the Peer-to-Peer Way A start-up called Cloudmark has
fashioned a novel technique to control that great scourge of
the online era, spam. Working through a plug-in to Outlook,
Cloudmark's SpamNet software embraces a community approach to
fight junk e-mail. Every time a consumer uses the
"block" feature to remove spam from their inbox,
they notify the SpamNet community at large so that the junk
e-mail is automatically blocked for other members as well.
There's also an "un-block" feature that members can
use if they feel a message is not spam. Apparently, SpamNet
does not delete the offending e-mail but moves it to a spam
folder. SpamNet is said to deploy a so-called Truth Evaluation
System to guarantee that only 'valid" spam messages are
blocked. SpamNet backers claim it stops 75% of spam
automatically and gets more effective as the community grows.
Cloudmark founder Jordan Ritter was the co-founder of Napster.
To get a free beta version of SpamNet, visit www.cloudmark.com.
Back
to Headlines
Gracenote, the company that
operates the CD database (CDDB) used to identify CDs in
digital media applications, has acquired all of the technology
and intellectual property from Cantametrix, a music waveform
analysis and identification company. Gracenote plans to use
the technology to offer advanced media services that recognize
audio signals from terrestrial radio and other analog
sources. Back
to Headlines
IP Dispute Could Stall Bertelsmann's Napster Buyout Music software company
PlayMedia Systems has filed court documents claiming it
provided key technology to the now-bankrupt Napster. German
media conglomerate Bertelsmann is in the midst of buying
Napster's assets, and Play-Media says its MP3 and security
technology can't automatically be transferred to Bertels-mann.
In other words, PlayMedia wants more
money. Back
to Headlines
RealNetworks' RealOne SuperPass
digital media subscription service is ready for European
consumers. The service features streaming video provided
through partnerships with BBC Worldwide, CNN, UEFA, Wimbledon,
MTV, Channel 4's "Big Brother," live music
performances from "The Old Grey Whistle Test," and
others. Real is charging 9.99 pounds per month or 14.99 euros
per month (about $14) for the service. The US version of the
service has attracted 600,000 subscribers. Back
to Headlines
Lehman Lowers PC Growth Forecast Citing recent announcements of
reduced sales expectations from AMD, Apple, Intel, HP and
Palm, Lehman Brothers lowered its forecasts for PC unit growth
from 7% to 2% for 2002 and from 9% to 6% for 2003. Lower
consumer demand and the demolishment of the myth of the
three-year replacement upgrade cycle were Lehman's two major
concerns. A strong consumer holiday selling season in 4Q01 was
driven by new products like Windows XP, Pentium IVs and iMacs
plus low prices and free financing. According to Lehman, there
does not appear now to be a lot of new products to drive the
same desire to purchase and consumers are still experiencing
poor W2 earnings. Back
to Headlines
Retail chain Circuit City is
going to stop selling VHS movies and increase the number of
titles on DVD. The stores will continue to sell VCRs, however.
Circuit City says customers are more interested in DVDs, but a
recent study by Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA)
found that VHS movie sales continue to beat DVDs. According to
the report, movie renters spent nearly three times as much on
VHS flicks than they do DVD titles. So far this year,
consumers have spent $542 million on 172 million DVD rentals
and renting and $1.3 billion on 500 million VHS rentals.
However, the margin is steadily shrinking, as DVDs become more
popular. Back
to Headlines
Music To Drive Home Network Demand Digital music is the killer
application for home networking, finds a report by Internet
research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. Initially, utilitarian
needs, such as sharing a broadband connection among multiple
PCs, will drive demand for home networks. However, a third of
US broadband subscribers are interested in using a home
network to deliver digital music from their computers to a
home stereo. Jupiter predicts that by 2006, 29%, or 23
million, of US homes with broadband will have a home network.
Just wait until they find out they can get movies,
too. Back
to Headlines
MPEG Video Chip Market Revenue To Triple By 2006 The MPEG video chip market will
triple in revenue to $3.3 billion from 2001 to 2006, according
to a report by market research firm In-Stat/MDR. MPEG chips
are used to compress and decompress video and are found in DVD
players, camcorders and set-top boxes. The report finds that
the video chip market will shift toward MPEG-4 and MPEG-2
standards, with other standards like MPEG-1
declining. Back
to Headlines
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) have settled their copyright infringement claims against music file-sharing service Audiogalaxy. The RIAA said Audiogalaxy agreed to filter copyrighted song titles from its peer-to-peer network and to pay a "substantial" sum based on its assets to the recording industry. -------------------------------------------------------------THE online REPORTER focuses on:
If ever that overused phrase "paradigm shift" was apt, it's now, about the Digital Media industry. There's not a company in the industry that's not worried about where it'll still be standing after the deluge - and that goes for leaders like AOL Time Warner as well as that feared monolith Microsoft. Its format is concise and pointed, its style a touch brash and, with any luck, a bit controversial. Its object is to break the stories that give its readers the real inside track. It is pledged to fact and fair comment. THE online REPORTER - Intelligence for decision makers.
North
American Subscriptions: sales@riderresearch.com;
Tel 225-769-7130; FAX: 225-769-7166 Europe
: Simon
Thompson simon@riderresearch.com Subscribe now. Only $595/£395 per year. Group Discounts available.
|
