ifprovidence.com

Prior to the public beta, Pageonce had 20,000 users and 60,000 accounts. The majority of the accounts cover e-mail, financial services, and social networks so far. The company plans to generate revenue from advertising, primarily via customer retention promotions, which represents about half the marketing spend at most consumer companies. Anonymized benchmarking data could also provide another revenue source.

Pageonce was founded by ex-Mercury (sold to Hewlett-Packard for $4.5 billion) executives and is planning a Series A investment round. The company was private funded with $1.5 million in May 2007.

Pageonce, which bills itself as a personal Internet assistant, has entered its public beta phase. (We covered its February debut here.)

The service lets users aggregate all of their Web accounts from a single dashboard. Users submit their user names and passwords for services, including finance, shopping, utilities, social networks, travel, and e-mail, into a Pageonce master account. After the accounts are activated, Pageonce can let users know how many minutes they have left on their cell phone account, and send notifications about flight itinerary changes, credit limits, friend request, bill payments, and other account activities.
Pageonce also provides a proactive function, making it easy for users to monitor their accounts for fraudulent activity. A version of the Pageonce for the
iPhone is also in development.

The utility of Pageonce is obvious, but it requires a level of trust for users to give up their access information to a single Internet service. Pageonce applies military-level security, Pageonce CEO Guy Goldstein told me, with multiple security layers, including 256-bit data encryption, SSL systems, and multiple firewalls. “All the data is encrypted, and we have hired hackers to try to break into our systems,” Goldstein said. Financial accounts are read-only, so from the Pageonce site a user’s accounts cannot be changed. Goldstein said Pageonce is also looking into token-based security solutions to provide great security assurance to users. Even with all the assurances of security, Pageonce must overcome a trust perception hurdle to gain acceptance.

Pageonce provides a dashboard and notifications of changes in accounts.

And the management and security advantages of thin clients can be considerable.
Especially when they’re mobile devices. Indeed, although it’s true that mixing "thin" (as in stateless) and "mobile" serves up its own set of challenges, the potential benefits can actually be greater than with desktops. After all, a desktop PC isn’t likely to get left in the back of a taxicab somewhere and the fact that desktop PCs are always tethered to an Ethernet cable simplifies pushing out application updates.

Yet here’s Hewlett-Packard introducing its first mobile thin client, a fruit of its 2007 acquisition of Neoware. From the press release:

HP isn’t the first vendor to offer a mobile thin client. But the other entrants are mostly small firms. This announcement is notable because it isn’t just another point device. Rather, it’s a mobile thin client that’s not only part of a broad lineup of thin client devices, but is also part of a broad lineup of HP hardware, software, and services offerings such as Consolidated Client Infrastructure (CCI). And that’s really an important storyline in the rise of thin clients.

So why does this make sense when the earlier examples I cited didn’t? There are a few factors to consider.

Designed for mobile workers who have a well-defined set of tasks requiring a wide range of general-purpose software or unique business applications, the HP Compaq 6720t Mobile Thin Client is ideal for on-the-go professionals such as insurance claim processors, remote staff, warehouse and inventory managers and office administrators.

It is based on Microsoft Windows XPe and features a 15.4-inch display; solid-state design with no hard drive, fan or other moving parts; enhanced security with no data residing on the notebook; Wi-Fi Certified WLAN along with support for 3G broadband wireless via PC memory card slot; and solid-state flash module for greater durability, faster data access and more quiet and cool operation.

Fast forward to 2007. Palm announced the Foleo as a companion to the Treo smartphone.  Palm founder Jeff Hawkins called this portable "Internet interface appliance" the best idea he ever had. Many others, including myself, begged to differ and, in the end, the product never made it to market. The issues hadn’t changed all that much in close to 20 years: too similar in price and bulk to a full laptop, and a problematic fit for an only somewhat connected world.

The general interest in thin clients. Businesses are showing an interest in thin clients as a category that far exceeds what we’ve seen historically. There are a variety of reasons for this that I cover in Desktops on Diets, but essentially we’re seeing a convergence of trends that are achieving a certain critical mass. As a result, even though mobile thin clients may be just a slice of the overall thin client market, that overall pie is growing rapidly.

The 6720t also helps increase security by accessing software applications hosted on a server, virtual PC or blade PC computing platform over a secure virtual private network Internet connection. Data files and software applications also are saved remotely on a secure server to help reduce the risk of data loss, viruses and product theft.

commentary

Sometime around 1990, Data General (who I worked for at the time) came out with a portable terminal called the Walkabout. The idea was that it would let people check their e-mail from the road using the built-in modem and terminal emulator, while being lighter and cheaper than the portable computers of the day. It wasn’t as silly an idea as it might seem today–lots of people still used terminals rather than PCs at the time–but, like the DG/One, it was ahead of the hardware curve, and pricey.

One size does not fit all, but historically vendors tended to push the narrow approaches in which they specialized. That’s changing today as companies like Citrix, HP, and IBM are combining technologies developed in-house and through partners to assemble a broader application delivery story that isn’t about using the same hammer for every problem.

Connectivity isn’t ubiquitous, but it is reliably available in certain environments. Wired campuses are becoming commonplace–universal even. More and more people likewise have wireless connectivity throughout their homes. In other words, workers who are only using their notebooks at work and at home actually do have essentially ubiquitous broadband connectivity. HP estimates that 35 percent to 40 percent of notebook users closely match this description–that is, they may take their notebooks with them to meetings or to do some work in the evening but they don’t typically take them on the road.

Client management is simplified, as IT administrators are able to remotely install, manage, update and execute application software simultaneously across an entire fleet of clients that are pushed to the mobile thin clients as soon as they are connected to the network.

Larry Lessig won’t be running for the U.S. Congress after all.

Lessig said on Monday that he won’t try to seek election in the congressional district stretching from the western edge of San Francisco down the peninsula into Silicon Valley. The seat was left vacant by the death of Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos this month, and Lessig said last week he was considering a campaign.

His decision to bow out was based on polls, said Lessig, a Stanford University Law professor, creator of Creative Commons, and free culture activist. A pollster he hired said there would be “no possible way” to win and that Lessig would certainly “lose in a big way.”

That’s because Lessig would be facing former state senator Jackie Speier, who enjoys the undeniable advantages of (a) being endorsed by Lantos, (b) having a year to work on her campaign, (c) being so effective in funneling tax dollars to the area that she has a Caltrain locomotive named after her, and (d) being a permanent part of the local Democratic Party apparatus since being elected in 1980 as a county supervisor.

This puts to rest a recent flurry of Let’s Elect Larry enthusiasm (and, of course, a Facebook group) that had already raised $4,978 and for all we know, began to print up yard signs.

Lessig would, no doubt, have been a principled and intelligent campaigner for copyright reform and fair use rights. But there’s more to politics in Silicon Valley than having an enthusiastic Internet fan base–as Barack Obama found out firsthand–and there’s probably more that voters want from a politician than a law prof who takes on Disney, Mickey Mouse, and the duration of copyright. But it’s too early to count out Lessig for good: his new project is modestly called change-congress.org.

commentary

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has a great post over on Datamation entitled, “Linux…Why is it So Hard to Give It Away?”. He addresses the difficulty in getting retailers to sell cheap Linux-based PCs, and decides that the problem is the support burden: It’s easier to offload that to Microsoft than to undertake it to save a few dollars:

Problem is, a price difference of even $50 at the lower end of the price spectrum could mean that consumers would be leaping onto the Linux wagon based on how much cash they have in their pockets instead of making a rational choice. Customers would be happy when they left the store but soon feel unhappy when problems bogged down their use of the new PC.

Good points, but I’m more interested in the larger, underlying question:

Why is giving away something for free such hard work?

Need an exceptional database? Try MySQL. Winning customer relationship management system? SugarCRM. Email/collaboration server? Zimbra.

And so on. All of these have free (as in both freedom and as in price) versions of their software. In many cases, even the free version is better than commercial equivalents. So why do people continue to pay for proprietary software?

Yes, there’s still some muddled, legacy thinking that “open source” equals “not so great,” but that foolish notion is fading fast. I think the real answer lies in market inertia: People don’t change quickly and will continue to make the same, wrong decisions for the foreseeable future. Slowly, open source will come to dominate, as even Gartner now recognizes.

In the meantime, it’s still a tough (but enjoyable and profitable) slog. Some day all software will be open source in some fashion. Until then, enjoy the trenches.

On Sunday, I had an e-mail alert about someone writing on my Facebook wall–a college acquaintance with whom I hadn’t spoken in quite some time. As it turns out, I was a victim of “wall spam,” a recent phenomenon on Facebook in which automated spam posts show up on members’ message walls. It’s similar to a wave of profile spam that swept News Corp.’s MySpace a few years ago.

The message in question read, “Some thinks you are special and has a hot^crush on you. Find out who it could be!! ;)” with a link to a Flash file claiming to be hosted on the imageshack.us domain.

But by the time I navigated to my Facebook profile to get rid of the spammy (and possibly virus-ridden) message–within an hour or two of the notification showing up in the first place–the wall post was gone. This means one of either two things: someone else saw the message on my profile and flagged it, or Facebook is actively policing the site to keep it under control, probably by searching for duplicates of a known spam message.

Of course, an hour or two is still a big enough frame of time for people to click on the link and get their computers loaded with some nasty new malware.

I’ve asked Facebook for comment on exactly what their strategy is and whether any members’ login credentials are getting compromised by this spam or virus. I’ll update when I hear back.

“Wall spam” rose to notoriety earlier this month, when members started noticing the phenomenon, and security firms started flagging worms that were spreading via Facebook members’ walls and installing malware when a link in the message was clicked. The company has recommended antivirus fixes and says it’s acting fast.

The Silicon Alley Insider reported earlier this month that Facebook had been deactivating links in identified spam posts; removing the posts entirely is a more aggressive measure.

“If we get a report of a bug or a hole from a user, a security researcher, a reporter, blogger, or anyone, we check it out and fix it as quickly as possible,” Facebook security chair Max Kelly wrote several weeks ago on the company blog in response to another virus. “In fact, we appreciate it when help comes our way from the many security experts and organizations out there.”

Twitter is still an early-adopter application, and if the system is running into scale issues already it’s unlikely that it will be able to keep up when mainstream adoption occurs.

Twitter appears to have a fundamental design flaw that’s not easily dealt with. It was designed to be a stand-alone system functioning in a multiparty/multiprotocol world. In the current architecture Twitter is an application, where it really needs to be a distributed system.

Maybe Twitter needs enterprise service bus (ESB) functionality that runs in enough distributed locations (Yahoo, Google, Amazon.com, desktop) to ensure that messages are reliably delivered. This could be achieved in a wide variety of ways without having to maintain a massive infrastructure like the carriers do for SMS. It would also enforce pervasiveness and adoption.

The fact that Twitter is based on Ruby on Rails is probably only part of the real issue, though Ruby does require a fair amount of tweaking to run reliably. Scale issues are less likely to happen with PHP or Java, but Ruby apps are generally easier to build.

I came up with a few analogous systems that might help to explain some of the technical ways Twitter-scale could be achieved:

1. File-sharing systems like Limewire and BitTorrent that store pieces across a wide variety of machines
2. Distributed systems such as DNS (Marc Canter nailed that one)
3. Something like XMPP that has presence without a physical location definition
4. MOM (message-oriented middleware), which takes a message and does something with it
5. MQ Series (message queueing), which essentially moves a message from one place to another

Currently all of these ideas sort of work and also all fall apart due to either cost or interests of those involved. For the user, Twitter has become a utility. For Twitter the company, it’s their business and we are all just messing with it.

The best case scenario is that the company figures out how to scale the application and maintains control before someone else figures it all out.

As a side note, I finally joined Twitter a few weeks ago and I can’t get into it. I blame Sarah Lacy–she’s been trying to tell me it’s cool and I am just not that hip or obsessed with what other people are doing. On the other hand I can see how social people are into it and why there is all this hubbub.

Twitter guys–I don’t know you but am happy to help. I deal with large-scale distributed systems all day long.

Links:
Twitter Can Be Liberated - Here’s How

How to build the Open Mesh

The Twitter site doesn’t allow you to create groups on it, a significant missing feature. But just because the site is lacking group support, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have any options available to you to create your own group with free Web tools. Believe it or not, if you really want to create groups and watch them grow, it’s not all that difficult.

The group formation phase

Step 1: Use Tweetworks If you’re tired of waiting for Twitter to add group support, use a site called Tweetworks. It allows you to create or join groups. It only took about 10 seconds for me to set one up. Just put in the name and description of the group and you’re all set. It’s the simplest way to create a group and get it off the ground.

Tweetworks is a great way to start your group.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)

Step 2: Promote your group on Twitter It seems counter-intuitive to create a group on another service and promote it on Twitter, but that’s precisely what you need to do, since you’re trying to get all your like-minded friends together. Tweetworks offers an automatic tweet that allows you to input a few characters followed by a link inviting friends to join the group. But unfortunately, it’s not very informative. Do it yourself.

Step 3: Get informative And that brings us to the next point. Because Tweetworks doesn’t make its tweets informative, you’ll need to do the legwork yourself. Put your group and its topic area into your own tweets on Twitter and place it in your e-mail. I’ve found that simply putting “Join my tech-focused Tweetworks group” followed by a link in an e-mail is a good way to get people to join. And since you’re appealing to the Twittersphere, make sure all your tweets make it clear what your vision for your group is. For example, if you’re forming a New York Yankees group, updating your stream with a message like, “Join my NY Yankees Twitter group on Tweetworks” followed by a link to the page should do the trick.

Step 4: Make sure the group is active What good is a group if it’s not active? If people come back to your group every day to find out what’s being said and see what kind of links are being shared, they’re more likely to tell their own followers about it.

Step 5: Join other groups If you really want to grow your own Twitter group, you’ll need to join others. See, most of the people who actually want to join groups are doing it already. So the best way to promote your own group and add members is to engage those people on Tweetworks. I joined four or five groups over the weekend. After talking with other members and coming to the realization that we had similar interests, I asked them to join my own group that I created earlier in the day. By Sunday night, my small Tweetworks private group of 3 had ballooned to 25 members.

The maturation phase

Step 6: Move your group to Ning If you’ve grown a large Twitter group, it’s time you break out of Tweetworks and create a full-featured group that appeals more to your members. If you’ve never used it, Ning is a service that allows you to create a hosted social network, complete with blogs, videos, photos, events, and other features that you simply won’t have available to you in Tweetworks–for free. Even better, it’s just as simple to set up as Tweetworks and in a matter of minutes you can modify its design, add modules, and secure a unique URL. It’s the best tool available to shoulder the desires of a large Twitter group, thanks to its customizability.

Step 7: Get back to marketing and tweeting Now that you’ve relaunched your Twitter group on Ning, you’ll need to start marketing it and tweeting about it again. Since Ning offers so many more opportunities for your group to communicate and connect, you’ll need to market the new features. Once again, get in touch with your Twitter followers and tell them about your new and improved group and be sure to make it clear in any outgoing e-mail that your Twitter group has become a full-featured social network. Knowing video and photos have been added to a niche group makes it even more compelling for potential group members.

Step 8: Capitalize on Ning’s power Now that you have a more powerful group and more users are signing up each day, make sure you and your group members use the site’s new features. What good is a blog, video, or photos section if you’re not using them? I’ve found that Ning social networks are best when users are actively using all the features. And since much of the content will probably be tailored towards the group’s interests, users should find the photos and videos compelling.

Step 9: Don’t stop tweeting Although it might be tempting, you can’t spend all your time in your group. Twitter is designed to be a community for everyone to share ideas and if you’re not an active part of that community, your group won’t grow nearly as quickly as you might like. You can’t lose sight of the fact that without Twitter, you wouldn’t have a group. Staying active on Twitter can keep any online group growing.

Step 10: Have fun Until groups make their way to Twitter, you’ll need to find a way to connect with followers and discuss topics that you really care about. There’s no better way to do that than with the help of Ning and Tweetworks. And once you get some users into your group and start messaging back and forth about common interests, you’ll see why harnessing those tools’ power to form your own group was worth it.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils a redesigned iPod Nano at last year's September iPod event. This year's is Tuesday.

(Credit:
Ina Fried/CNET News)

Other than football fans, there are probably few people in America happier to see the month of September than Apple executives.

Apple will look to put the last six weeks behind it with the expected launch of new iPods this week during one of its trademark media events in San Francisco on Tuesday. This summer, the company received a stark reminder that while its singular ability to produce a technology event still generates buzz, the products must match that hype.

The rumors regarding this particular launch event, Apple’s fourth September
iPod-related event in as many years, have been fairly consistent and sensible. We expect new iPod Nanos that do away with the ugly squat design, a revamped iPod Touch at a lower price, a higher-capacity iPod Shuffle, and a possible grab-bag item from the MacBook/Beatles/iTablet bin.

Those products aren’t quite as ambitious as the
iPhone 3G, or the MobileMe service, the launches of which went somewhat awry this July. But in a way, perhaps they are more important, because the iPod represents Apple to more people around the world than any other Apple product by far.

Ever since CEO Steve Jobs stunned a September 2005 crowd with the unveiling of the super-slim iPod Nano, Apple’s ability to (mostly) follow through on the hype generated by its events has turned the company into a tech powerhouse.

More than any of its rivals, Apple has managed to continuously release products that are hip, stylish, easy to use, and functional (we’ll forget about the iPod Hi-Fi for the purposes of this discussion). It’s why Apple has the best consumer satisfaction scores by far in its industry, and why the
Mac and the iPhone are hot sellers.

But for a company so skilled at one form of communication–the carefully orchestrated product release–Apple has had a hard time this summer connecting with disgruntled customers.

A chink in Apple’s armor has surfaced: its secretive nature creates a mystique around the company when the products are excellent, but that same communications strategy makes it appear aloof and indifferent when customers are angry over product glitches.

Apple has been forced to give away two months worth of MobileMe subscriptions in order to try to make up for the debacle that was the migration from .Mac to MobileMe, an Internet service that’s designed to let you share data between Macs, PCs, and iPhones. And it’s scrambling to patch perhaps its buggiest software release in years, the iPhone 2.0 software, which has produced a laundry list of problems, such as fuzzy reception, persistent application crashes, a laggy keyboard, and the bizarre “iPhone cubism” camera issue.

Apple employees and customers mill about during the iPhone 3G's glitch-filled launch. Apple needs a problem-free rollout from the expected new lineup of iPods.

(Credit:
Tom Krazit/CNET News)

Thankfully for Apple, none of these issues seem to have really affected sales as of yet. Mac sales are growing at a rapid pace, and new notebooks arriving in relatively short order should help that trend continue. And despite all its glitches, the iPhone 3G is selling briskly; expect Jobs to reveal just how many Apple has sold to date during a week in which the mobile industry is gathering in San Francisco for the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment Show.

So if the new iPods live up to Apple’s usual standard for its products, Apple should be able to shrug off the months of July and August, and get ready for the last quarter of the calendar year, which is usually a blowout one for the company.

In any event, it’s not like there is any other company pushing Apple in the personal-music player market these days. Microsoft’s new Zune player made an appearance last week without provoking a stampede to Best Buy. While some old foes have made a little noise in recent months, few other competitors seem all that interested in taking down the 800-pound gorilla of the MP3 player market.

Expect the usual dog-and-pony show on Tuesday as Apple shows off its latest batch of iPods, perhaps augmented by some hip cool rock band all the rage with the kids these days. But watch the pace of iPod sales following the event to see if Apple has truly moved past its summer of woe and regained its launch event magic.

For the first time in a long time, even die-hard Apple fans may be thinking twice about being the first on their block to snap up Apple’s latest offering.

Yahoo co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang issued another rally call to troops on Wednesday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company-wide e-mail was Yang’s second in three days. It includes not only encouragement to employees, but touts recent activities by the company that have been overshadowed by Microsoft’s unsolicited $44.6 billion buyout bid.

Here’s the text of Yang’s Wednesday e-mail on Microsoft’s merger proposal, which undoubtedly won’t be his last.

Subject: Building on our strengths

yahoos —

first off, I want to thank you for the great job you’re doing staying focused on executing our priorities. there’s obviously been a lot of talk about yahoo! in recent days and we won’t let it distract us from pursuing our transformation strategy.

roy and I have communicated about the thorough review process our board is going through right now. the board is focused on maximizing the value of yahoo!’s tremendous assets for our shareholders. and it is going to take the time it needs to do it right.

as we’ve said, no decisions have been made about microsoft’s proposal. our board is thoughtfully evaluating a wide range of potential strategic alternatives in what is a complex and evolving landscape. and we’ve hired top advisors to assist through the process.

what’s become clear in the past few days is how much people care about this company. we’ve seen a strong show of support from our users, advertisers, and publishers, reminding us how much they love our products and services. and i’ve heard from many of you — and from other friends and colleagues from around silicon valley and across the globe — that we need to do what’s best for yahoo! and our shareholders. i promise you that the board is going to do that.

the microsoft interest highlights the tremendous strength of the yahoo! brand and assets: our half billion users around the world, our leading products and services, our open ad network, our technology, and most of all, our amazingly talented people.

we have a lot to be excited about and there’s more good news to come. yesterday we announced a digital music partnership with rhapsody and our acquisition of foxytunes, maker of the popular music toolbar plugin. today we launched zimbra 5.0, a next generation e-mail and collaboration suite that’s a great milestone in our open platform and starting point strategies. and stay tuned for exciting announcements next week at the mobile world congress.

as we look to build on the progress we’ve been making, i want to make sure you all realize how essential you are to yahoo!’s success. as this process moves forward, we’re going to keep you informed. your hard work and strong commitment are more important now than ever before.

jerry

Via-based Everex gPC2

(Credit:
Wal-Mart)

Intel’s low-cost Atom processors will be at the core of inexpensive PCs. And inexpensive computers these days often come with Linux.

How do PC companies shave off the last hundred dollars or so to get to $299 or in some cases $199? Easy. They swap out Windows (pricey) for Linux (free).

Case in point: Home Depot, the home supply store, sells a Mirus-branded desktop with either Windows or Linux. Based on the same hardware, one model sells for $419, the other for $299. Can you guess which one is $299? That’s a steep price cut–more than 25 percent–for the system with Linux. Inside the Mirius is a Celeron D 420, which lists for $34, the cheapest chip that Intel currently lists on its pricing Web site.

Linux-based PCs like this are prime real estate for Atom. Especially when reports this week cite the cheapest upcoming Atom processors (due in the second quarter) at below $30.

A likely high-profile candidate for Atom and Linux is the Eee PC. The Linux option allows resellers to keep offerings as cheap as possible. The current Eee PC at Newegg is priced at $349 with Linux and a Celeron M processor (the forerunner–from the standpoint of market positioning–to Atom).

Processors from Via Technologies also match up well with Linux operating systems such as gOS. Wal-Mart sells (online) an Everex gPC2 TC2512
desktop computer with a 1.5GHz Via C7-D Processor and Google-centric gOS for $199.

(Correction: gOS is a Linux distribution from “Good OS LLC.”)

The Asus Eee PC is a candidate for the Atom processor.

(Credit:
Asus)

Though Atom-based computers with Linux will be targeted at emerging markets, the success of the Eee PC in mature markets like the U.S. and Japan means that there is pent-up demand for stripped-down but practical PCs. “In emerging markets it will be a first PC. In mature markets, it will be a second or third PC within a household,” said Dean McCarron, founder and principal of Mercury Research. Also, an Atom-based desktop could potentially go on the back of a monitor that is used in point-of-sale applications, McCarron said.

And don’t overlook Via’s C7 or low-end versions of its upcoming Isaiah processor being paired with low-cost computers with a Linux option. The V7 is slated for HP’s upcoming HP 2133 Mini-Note PC and Isaiah is expected to garner a number of design wins in both ultraportable notebooks and desktops.

Though the HP 2133 may not be the best example of a low-cost PC (it is expected to come with
Windows Vista Business, hiking the price to almost $750), expect Linux-based “Netbooks” (Intel’s self-described category for small, inexpensive notebooks) to be less expensive than this.