Microsoft announced today that it will give out a free version of its enterprise search product, dubbed Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, starting next year. This is the latest in a growing line of "Express" products, which Microsoft hopes will get people hooked on Microsoft software and eventually buy more expensive versions. Microsoft also put up a test release-candidate version of Search Server Express for download on its web site.
Search Server Express shares nearly the same feature set as the company's more robust enterprise search products, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Search Server. Microsoft will also release a paid version of the product, which allows business users to search internal computer systems in addition to the web at large, that will basically be the same as the free edition but licensed to run on multiple servers.
Last week in Reston, Virginia, the New New Internet conference took place, and the spotlight was on the adoption
of new social technologies in the enterprise. One morning panel was moderated by
Ryan Carson and featured Brad Feld, the Managing Director at the Foundry Group,
Hans Hwang, VP Advanced Services, Cisco, and myself. During the course of our discussion, Ryan brought up a set of interesting questions:
The discussion eventually brought us to an even broader question: Why should enterprises go social, and what are the compelling reasons for adoption? On the surface there are immediate benefits, but from experience we know that consumer technologies do not directly map into the enterprise. In this post, we explore the reasons for the social enterprise, look at what social technologies fit and raise various concerns related to adoption.
ReadWriteWeb is proud to be a partner of the first annual Crunchies, a competition and award ceremony for the best startups of the year. It is being run by TechCrunch, Read/WriteWeb, GigaOm and VentureBeat. As the name indicates, TechCrunch is the driving force behind the awards and event - but it is a collaborative effort between the 4 of us. I'm a personal fan of the 3 other blogs, so it's great that we're working together on this event.
How will we be involved? Read/WriteWeb will be sponsoring some of the award categories that most align with our brand, and we will be involved in category selection and the ceremony. Nominations and voting will start soon at the Crunchies site. There will be a real-world award ceremony and party to announce the awards - date and venue tbc (it'll be in San Francisco though).
Most of all, the awards and ceremony is about celebrating Web startups - all the hard work they put in and innovation they create. So we at Read/WriteWeb are thrilled to be working with TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat to bring you the Crunchies! Stay tuned for more details over the coming weeks.
Last week we told you about some upcoming Web Conferences. We also gave away a ticket to Defrag, which is on right now. The winner was Kevin Cawley, so hope he is having a good time :-) R/WW has a few people at Defrag - Sean, Alex and Charles Knight (of AltSearchEngines) are all there. The Web 2.0 Expo is on this week too, in Berlin - give us a shout if you're attending, it'd be good to have some coverage of it on R/WW.
We had some follow up messages about other events, so here is an update...
The GigaOm Network is presenting a one day event called NewTeeVee Live, to be held in San Francisco on 14th of November. The event will showcase the online video industry. NewTeeVee is a similar blog to last100 (a Read/WriteWeb Network blog), so we will be closely following the action. R/WW readers can get a discount on NewTeeVee live tickets by clicking here.
Note: if anyone would like to provide some live coverage of NewTeeVee Live for last100, please contact us. We may be able to get you a free press pass to the event.
Joost, the desktop-based long-form video service that aims to take on the old TV model with a large pile of venture capital, is scrapping one of its defining features built in-house, inline chat, and replacing it with outside chat service meebo. Essentially, the announcement means that users will be able to chat with all their friends on MSN, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and GoogleTalk while watching the high-resolution, professional video content on Joost. It's a good combination.
If you haven't checked out Joost lately, I can tell you that I looked at it for the first time in months tonight: it looks nicer, has far more content (and ads) than before and appears more stable on a Mac. It's free for anyone to download. The meebo integration was supposed to have gone live minutes ago, I'm not seeing it yet but I'm sure it will arrive soon.
A web-based cross-platform chat client, meebo says more than 1 million people spend over two and a half hours each, daily, on its site. Joost, which has started by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström amongst others, has raised almost $50 million in venture funding and says it has had more than 1 million beta testers. It's a good distribution deal for meebo, but some cross promotion to meebo users wouldn't hurt Joost either. That will likely happen, at the very least, every time a meebo user chatting with their IM friends on MSN or Yahoo messenger through Joost is asked "what are you doing?"
Meebo is a VC darling as well - this is the kind of deal that high-powered investors can help make happen, a great example of why people say it's as much about the connections as it is about the cash.
Joost launched a developer platform for widgets at the end of this summer, though there's little evidence of widespread adoption of that platform yet. Meebo launched a platform of its own last week with selected partners offering everything from integrated audio to live streaming video. Complex features are all well and good, but tonight's announcement is likely to be one of the most significant features either of these companies can offer.
Gartner recently released a couple of reports on how web 2.0 technologies are being used in e-Government. The reports are entitled The E-Government Hype Cycle Meets Web 2.0 and Government and Web 2.0: The Emerging Midoffice. Both are about how modern e-government efforts are moving away from the 'one stop shop' portal approach that characterized early efforts, and are turning more towards mashups and (to quote the first Gartner report) "a number of mostly adventurous initiatives with blogs, wikis or islands in Second Life." But it's the ecosystem of Web Services - and the reusability of content and services that Web Services enable - that really excites Gartner about web 2.0 in e-government.
The 'Hype Cycle' Gartner report makes it plain that Gartner analysts do not consider all aspects of Web 2.0 to be useful in e-government. Wikis, Ajax, virtual worlds and blogs require "control" if used in an e-government context, according to this passage:
"Actions such as jumping on the wiki bandwagon, leveraging technologies such as Ajax for richer user interfaces or diving into virtual worlds to entice the so-called "digital natives" will result in a sudden awakening for governments. We expect several governments in developed economies to establish virtual government strategies that define how to participate in a variety of virtual communities, ranging from internal ones that engage employees, to external ones where they will reach out to constituents.
Such efforts will provide value only if they are very well-focused and conducted — at least initially — in the context of gated communities where governments can exercise some degree of control."
Don't all IT projects require focus? Admittedly though, for government business it is important to have strict security, ID, accountability and compliance functionality in place. These things have presented challenges for quite some time in regards to wikis and blog. However, products like Atlassian - which recently partnered with Microsoft to integrate with SharePoint - have more than enough 'control' to satisfy most government departments.
National Public Radio, the US radio network too long lagging in the technology department, relaunched NPR Music late last night. The new site is a real joy to use. While the old NPR website ran all media through RealPlayer or Windows Media, the new site employs a slick Flash pop-up player that's easy to use. The site also integrates media from 12 leading local NPR affiliates. Say what you will about their politics - NPR does a great job on music.
After months if not years of speculation, Google announced today that they are not in fact developing a single phone, but rather an ostensibly open-source mobile operating system called Android. Google stock prices jumped from $710 per share to $730 per share this morning on the news.
For all the "wow" everyone was hoping for from a GPhone, this is probably a much smarter move. Just as all non-dominant players in the social networking market have to give some thought to teaming up under the Google-led OpenSocial, so too will all mobile manufacturers likely think hard about leveraging the Google-led Android in the face of the iPhone's threat to remake their industry. Google won't be able to match Apple's eye-candy, but they may be able to offer far more utility in a mobile OS that's still far more pleasing to use than almost anything else on the market today.
Android was developed in co-ordination with the 30 members of the Open Handset Alliance. Participating vendors include Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile; but not AT&T and Verizon.
Android will be available for any phone manufacturer to install and build on top of. It will allow for extensive use of Google applications, mashups based on those applications combined with third party apps and will in time live on portable devices other than phones, like car navigation systems.
Google says that some of the partner companies are aiming for a late 2008 release of Android enabled phones. The developers' SDK will be available in about a week. The OS is based on Linux and Java.
The New York Times was briefed extensively before today's announcement and the Official Google Blog's announcement is here.
IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet conglomerate that runs some of the web's most well-known brands, announced that it will be broken up into 5 companies. Current head of the company, Barry Diller, will run IAC -- which will remain a potpourri of Internet properties including Ask, Evite, InsiderPage, Match.com, Excite, CollegeHumor, and others, and will manage IAC's investments in sites like BrightCove, and MerchantCircle. The other four newly formed properties will be HSN (shopping), Ticketmaster (event tickets), Interval International (vacation/travel), and LendingTree (loans).
"We've been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years," said Diller in a statement about the split. "And while we've created a lot of value, I've always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors." According to Diller, the spun off entities will retain strong inter-company relationships.
IAC also announced a major advertising deal with Google, according to paidContent. The deal will put Google sponsored search ads on IAC properties and is worth at least $3.5 billion, said Diller in a press conference this morning.
IACI was up nearly 9% in early morning trading.
The world's largest social networking site today announced that it would be launching a new advertising program it calls "HyperTargeting," which uses profile data to target ads to users. MySpace rolled out the first phase of its HyperTargeting program to a select group of advertisers, including Microsoft, Ford, Toyota, Proctor & Gamble, and Universal Pictures, in July by dividing its users into 10 target groups (music, movies, personal finance, gaming, consumer electronics, sports, travel, auto, fashion, and fitness). The company claims that performance increases for early testers of the platform were as high as 300% over demographically tageted ads.
