Month: August 2005

Voice over IP over 3G++

Can Cisco manage the Vikings? I doubt it:

LONDON (Reuters)—Cisco Systems Inc. is considering buying the world’s top mobile handset maker Nokia in a bid to gain its wireless infrastructure technology, the Business newspaper reported on Sunday.

The paper, which did not reveal the source of its information, said U.S.-based Cisco had traditionally concentrated on acquisitions of niche technology players, but its Chief Executive John Chambers is believed to be interested in merging with a wireless infrastructure company.

“Nokia has been identified as the most likely target,” the paper said.

Cisco’s acquisitions have generally declined sharply in productivity as they’re forced to conform to Cisco’s management model, so this would pretty well signal the end of both companies. That would be a plus to the networking industry, so go for it, router dudes. Voice over IP over 3G++?

Sure, why not.

Google throws a hissy fit

Everybody in the world has to deal with Google-stalkers, except Google’s CEO, of course:

CNETNews.com, a technology news Web site, said last week that Google had told it that the company would not answer any questions from CNET’s reporters until July 2006. The move came after CNET published an article last month that discussed how the Google search engine can uncover personal information and that raised questions about what information Google collects about its users.

The article, by Elinor Mills, a CNET staff writer, gave several examples of information about Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, that could be gleaned from the search engine. These included that his shares in the company were worth $1.5 billion, that he lived in Atherton, Calif., that he was the host of a $10,000-a-plate fund-raiser for Al Gore’s presidential campaign and that he was a pilot.

After the article appeared, David Krane, Google’s director of public relations, called CNET editors to complain, said Jai Singh, the editor in chief of CNETNews.com. “They were unhappy about the fact we used Schmidt’s private information in our story,” Mr. Singh said. “Our view is what we published was all public information, and we actually used their own product to find it.”

Google was supposed to be committed to not being evil, but this act of childish malice belies that claim.

Gee, I wonder if they’re going to demote my site again for saying this. Oh well.

Downloading Beethoven

People aren’t as dumb as they look. BBC reports that people dowloaded a whole lot Beethoven than Bono in a fair test:

Forget Coldplay and James Blunt. Forget even Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, in the version performed at Live8 by Sir Paul McCartney and U2, has become the fastest online-selling song ever. Beethoven has routed the lot of them.

Final figures from the BBC show that the complete Beethoven symphonies on its website were downloaded 1.4m times, with individual works downloaded between 89,000 and 220,000 times. The works were each available for a week, in two tranches, in June.

Sgt Pepper could well end up as the best-selling online track of all time. But its sales figure of just 20,000 online in the two weeks since it has been available contrasts poorly with the admittedly free Beethoven symphonies. (Sgt Pepper cost 79p on the iTunes website.)

Beethoven rules, Bono drools.