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IBM starts blogging. Big time

Early next week IBM will introduce the largest ever corporate blogging initiative in a bid to encourage any of its 130,000 staff to become online evangelists for the company.

Employees will taught what blogging is, and they will be guided on what is appropriate blogging content. IBM has also set up a wiki, a simple technology that allows groups to collaborate on projects and share knowledge. Wikis are not as sophisticated as IBM’s Notes collaborative software, but they are making significant inroads within corporate departments where they sometimes displace the use of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

The goal is to help improve IBM’s competitive position in key IT markets by having more of its tech gurus participating in online communities and discussions.

This type of evangelism through blogging can be extremely effective and potentially reduce advertising and marketing costs—a very large line item for most companies.

IBM’s blogging initiative includes the publication of interviews with staff who are already bloggers and are well recognized within their online communities.

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History of GUI

Wether you are a geek or just an Windows user over at arstechnica.com there is an very interesting A History of the GUI from Englebart’s NLS demo and Xerox Parc until the nowadays Windows XP and MacOSX.

Many people consider the graphical user interface to be stagnant, differing little in its basic desktop, windows, mouse, icons, and pointer concept from the original Lisa of 1983. In some respects this is because people became familiar with the Lisa/Macintosh style of graphical interface and future projects leveraged that familiarity. However, given the extremely long gestation of the GUI from its humblest beginnings, and given that personal computer sales rose exponentially only in the mid-1990s, it is probably more accurate to think of the GUI as a slow evolution towards an ideal interface. While some attempts have been made (such as Sun’s Looking Glass demo and Microsoft’s 3D user interface research project) to radically change the way we interact with the GUI, the chances of these types of changes making their way to mainstream GUIs seem remote.

However, as we look forward to Longhorn and future versions of Mac OS X, we can see that although much of the core functionality of the GUI remains unchanged since its earliest debut, the potential for adding new features and modes of interaction remains limitless.

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Assault on Microsoft

The next two years will be crucial for software giant Microsoft. Under attack on numerous fronts, it could falter – or fight back to become even more dominant. That’s the way an interesting article on the topic starts on BBC homepage.

Starting by criticizing Microsoft multiple security issues or ar cry from real life projects like M.Home the article is making a short round-up of the more increased Microsoft competition on various fields from search, to operating systems, browsing or even the popular Office suite.

“Companies are not afraid of competing with Microsoft anymore,” says Marc Benioff, the boss of salesforce.com, which offers a service over the internet which competes with Microsoft in the lucrative market for “customer relationship management” software.

Here is Microsoft’s problem: while rivals try to pick off its software offering one by one, new ways of writing software – for example open source – speed up the pace of innovation and threaten Microsoft’s business model.

The fate of “Longhorn” is a case in point. The much-heralded successor to Windows XP is badly delayed and key components won’t be ready for launch.

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US Deficits May Hurt Others

If rates rise rise, and that’s what ultimately will happen if there’s no U.S. policy adjustment, then all developing countries will suffer.

Continued high U.S. budget and trade deficits could sharply cut economic growth in developing countries by driving up interest rates and weakening the dollar, the World Bank said today.

Even without the impact of U.S. deficits, average economic growth in China, Russia, India and other developing economies is expected to decline from a three-decade high of 6.6 percent in 2004 to 5.2 percent next year, the bank said in a report on the global economic outlook.

But it said that fall could be sharper if financial markets respond to continued heavy U.S. borrowing by pushing up interest rates.

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Wireless Philadelphia

After quite a debate Mayor John F. Street on Thursday signed off on a plan to build a network to provide wireless high-speed Internet access throughout Philadelphia.

This is quite an impressive innitiative and I’m really looking forward for the development of these kind of networks as other cities are already into it.

The network will provide free high-speed Internet access in selected areas of Philadelphia, such as parks. Internet Service Providers and community organizations will be able to use the network to sell high-speed Internet access in other areas. The network will enable them to provide that service at the cost of dial-up Internet access. (via BizJournals)

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$10 bln in unclaimed stocks

An interesting article on IT Facts about the amount of “free money” in the United States. The SEC cannot locate approximately 3 mln lost shareholders, representing $10 bln in unclaimed stocks. 87,500 tax refunds were returned to the IRS in 2004, totaling $73 mln. In the state of Texas alone, $72 mln of lottery winnings went unclaimed in 2003. An estimated $600 mln of un-redeemed store credits and gift certificates expired last year.

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European Union to Get Its Own Domain

E-mail and Web addresses ending in “.eu” should appear on the Internet within the next year or so, giving Europeans a unified presence online.

Within weeks, “.eu” is expected to be formally entered into the 13 computers that form the master directories for the Domain Name System, EURid said in a statement. It will be months, though, before companies, groups and individuals can begin to register “.eu” names. The four-month sunrise period is expected to begin in the fourth quarter, meaning regular registrations won’t begin until early next year.

Supporters of the domain name believe “.eu” – for European Union – will help promote European identity and create greater visibility for pan-European e-commerce.

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Search engines tremble

No week without the big four search engines movements and trembles.

Ask Jeeves (owner of Ask.com and Ask.co.uk search Web sites, algorithmic search engine technology Teoma, AJkids, and Bloglines, the Excite, iWon, MySearch, MyWay, and MyWebSearch properties, MaxOnline online advertising network, and Fun Web Products adware purveyor) was just bought by IAC/InterActiveCorp for an estimated $1.85 billion all-stock deal, less the cash and equivalents. IAC/InterActiveCorp, who already owns huge and well known on-line brands as CitySearch, Entertainment Publications, Evite, Home Shopping Network, LendingTree, Gifts.com, Zero Degrees, Match.com, Udate.com, and Ticketmaster, plans to grow Ask Jeeves by placing a search bar on Web pages of IAC’s other sites that attract 44 million unique visitors, and expects many of them to use the Ask Jeeves search bar instead of going to another site to conduct a search, such as Google.

Meanwhile MSN unveiled its adCenter and a beta version of its MSN Shopping Beta.Yahoo is not loosing time and aquires the web-based photo sharing company Flickr well recognised service which allows its users to upload digital photos from computers and camera phones and accumulate them into albums that can be posted on blogs and easily shared with other users. Yahoo also announced that starting April it will giving in the mail storage arms race and will offer 1 gigabyte of mail to its users to keep up with Google’s offering.

With all its competitors moving big, Google’s only news last week is the dropping France Presse news agency from its Google News Service after the frech sue them over pulling together photos and story excerpts from its website.

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Spam – we help it grow

Spam lives and got where it is nowadays because of the users. Well not all of us but still. One of the reasons spam got us here is that as many as a third of e-mail users have clicked on links in spam messages. More than that. One in ten users have bought products advertised in junk mail (wow, that’s scary, I would say). What those clicking users love? Well, surprise surprise:

There was an 180% rise in sex-related spam over the course of the last month.

A recent survey conducted by security firm Mirapoint and market research company the Radicati Group, published by BBC, Bad e-mail habits sustains spam, which concludes:

People must resist their basic instincts to buy from spam mails. Spammers are criminals, plain and simple. If no-one responded to junk e-mail and didn’t buy products sold in this way, then spam would be as extinct as the dinosaurs

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US deficit at all-time high. Oil price too

Well, I know politics gets ugly if needed, but the point is not the goal of US politics agenda, which is or rather should be to the benefit of US tax-payer. It’s rather about the way it’s done and the fact that US itself is trying to impose a different standard pretending it’s holding on to a single one. After all, US politics instated so many dictatorships in the name of democracy and freedom.

Securing cheap and relatively stable oil resources it’s quite a dream now that the oil price is at it’s all time high, stability in Iraq is rather a dream and the costs of war on terror exceeded by far any initial estimate.

Keeping the discussion strictly to economics, let’s not forget that the U.S. deficit in the broadest measure of international trade surged to an all-time high last year ($665.9bn), increasing a potential threat to the economy as the country sank deeper into debt to Japan, China and other nations. All that despite the fact that the falling dollar was supposed to close our trade gap by increasing the attractiveness of goods made in the US to both domestic and foreign consumers.

The current account deficit represents the amount of financing the United States needs to cover its international accounts, and thus covers all aspects of foreign trade, from goods and services to investment flows among countries.

Foreigners have been happy to sell cars, computers and clothing to Americans and accept dollars in exchange. That money then is invested in the U.S. stock market, corporate bonds and Treasury securities.

Analysts worry the deficits are so high that foreigners could at some point lose their appetite for dollar-denominated investments. That could lead to a rush for the exits, plunging the value of the dollar and stock prices while causing interest rates to soar.

The higher interest rates would act as a drag on the U.S. economy. They would force up borrowing costs, for example, for home mortgages, auto loans and the investment spending that businesses need to expand.

“We can’t keep running current account deficits at these levels. It means we are borrowing nearly 6 percent of our GDP from the rest of the world, and the gap is growing,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York.

It’s true that US Economy is still high, as compared with all others, but it seems that it’s oil based strategy has no future in the long term, and long is not that long enough;).