“We’re taking SQL Server we’re pulling pieces of it apart and we’re putting it back together,” Campbell said in an interview. One of the challenges is taking software designed to run highly reliable servers and storage and turning it into a commodity service.

Campbell wouldn’t get into how Microsoft would price the service, but said it some type of usage model that takes into account both the amount of data stored in the cloud as well as the bandwidth used in transferring information.

“A lot of computing and storage is going to be moving online,” he said. “For them not to get into this game would be suicidal at some level.”

What Microsoft is doing in this case with its database is also the kind of thing it makes sense to imagine the company doing with a variety of “building block” services.

“They are targeting a somewhat different market, but everyone competes at some level,” he said.

CNET News.com’s Dan Farber contributed to this report.

Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said that it’s important for Microsoft to be a player in this area.

“If you give up a tiny bit in terms of the degree of consistency in the architecture, you can get tremendous resiliency and scale, but you want to retain enterprise-class quality around data service,” he explained. Factoring data into classes of data or tiers is one way to improve the class of service using commodity gear, he said.

But, Campbell said, that’s also where the opportunity lies. “In this world, dumb and fast rules.”

Campbell downplayed the notion that Microsoft was competing with Amazon.com’s S3 service.

Dave Campbell

“SQL Data Services is a building block for Microsoft’s longer term vision of a services fabric for developing and deploying applications,” Campbell said. “Imagine at some point a version of Visual Studio with a services palette in the toolbox and wiring up and composing services.”

LAS VEGAS–While Internet Explorer 8 demos, Silverlight progress and a Monkey Boy reprise from Steve Ballmer captured much of the attention at Mix 08–it was a database announcement that could be the sleeper announcement of the show.

What Microsoft announced was a database-in-the-cloud service where Web developers can store their data. Those attending the Mix show here were able to sign up for a beta test that is set to begin in three or four weeks, with a final version aimed to be launched by the end of the year, according to Dave Campbell, a technical fellow in Microsoft’s SQL Server division.

Haff said that there are some differences, since Amazon targets largely unstructured data and Microsoft is aimed more at structured and semi-structured data, but said it’s not like the two don’t overlap.

Microsoft just announced the obvious: open source is an increasingly critical (and common) component of software today, including proprietary software. The open-source software in question is jQuery, an excellent open-source javascript library that Microsoft will be including in its Visual Studio application development platform.

…[W]e’re using jQuery just as it is. It’s Open Source, and we’ll use it and ship it via its MIT license, unchanged. If there’s changes we want, we’ll submit a patch just like anyone else. JQuery will also have full support from PSS (Product Support Services) like any other Microsoft product, starting later this year. Folks have said Microsoft would never include Open Source in the platform, I’m hoping this move is representative of a bright future.

commentary

Did Microsoft finally join the open-source community? It looks like it from here. Now if we can just keep Ballmer quiet for a few months so that this seed sprout and begin to grow….

Of course, this has always been the case at Microsoft, what with MSN Messenger and other products incorporating open-source components for years, but this is perhaps the first time that Microsoft has publicly welcomed open source as part of its software infrastructure, and has shown a desire to contribute back to existing communities. Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman enthusiastically acknowledges the inclusion of jQuery:

He said that undoubtedly Microsoft will choose to go with Microsoft-developed services in some areas and Yahoo-developed ones in other areas, meaning that Microsoft will have open source-powered services for some time.

“We should not have two of everything,” Ballmer said. “We’ll have to sort some of that through.”

On Danger, Ballmer said that Microsoft was attracted to the way the Sidekick gets applications and data to its users as well as the consumer interface and appeal. However, he made clear that he believed those things could be brought over to the Windows Mobile operating system and still preserved.

Danger’s Sidekick device uses a Java operating system, while Yahoo is known for its extensive use of open-source software to power its services.

Speaking at the Mix ‘08 conference, Ballmer said that Microsoft would likely take on some of the open-source PHP applications that Yahoo relies on for its services, again assuming Yahoo ever starts returning Microsoft’s phone calls.

“I’m sure a bunch of them will be running at high scale and in production for a long time to come,” he said.

“That was a painfully long gap,” he said. “You won’t see those kinds of gaps on Windows.”
He also said that Microsoft has learned how to incubate new browser features apart from Windows releases and then bring them back into the next version of the operating system. “We’re now having to hustle as hard as we’ve had to hustle to drive browser innovation.”

“We’re going to try to give you exciting choices and encourage you in ways that make sense to pick the Microsoft alternative,” he said. Asked about the browser market, Ballmer reiterated past comments that the company made a mistake in trying to tie too many products to Longhorn, a move that hurt the company in the browser area among many others.

roundup
Mixing it up with Microsoft Click here for full Mix ‘08 coverage.

“The Danger acquisition is really about building up an application and service aspect on top of our Windows Mobile platform,” he said. “Danger is really a service application experience and we want to make sure we get that in market on a great set of phones.”

LAS VEGAS–With the acquisition of Danger and the proposed bid for Yahoo, Microsoft is looking at taking on a whole lot of non-Windows technology.

Samsung SC-HMX10

(Credit: CNET Networks)

It was a relatively quiet week for digital imaging coverage, but here’s the wrap-up (didn’t that get you all excited?):

The earlier Photoshop Express terms of service had raised hackles among those concerned about a clause that gave Adobe sweeping rights to photos stored at the site. Those terms granted Adobe “a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such content and to incorporate such content into other materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.”

Responding to criticism, Adobe Systems has modified the legal terms for using its online Photoshop Express service, a move the company promised would happen.

The new terms of service can be read at the company’s site.

In addition, MySpace.com is preparing to launch its own streaming service that will offer unlimited plays.

Free streaming music turns people on to new music and encourages them to buy, says social-networking site Last.fm. In the music industry, this will not come as a huge revelation.

So what does that mean?

Indeed, when it comes to allowing users to test drive music before they buy, Last.fm is definitely in the back seat. Imeem offers unlimited plays while London-based Last.fm only allows a user to listen to an individual song three times.

(Credit:
Lastfm.com )

“We wanted to see how this service works first,” Ward said. “(The spike in sales) will encourage more discussion about pushing those limits back.”

Ward added that his company isn’t worried much about competitors. He said what separates Last.fm from the others is its music-discovery engine that can suggest songs based on what a user has listened to in the past.

Last.fm says streaming leads to bigger music sales.

Last.fm, acquired by CBS last May, announced Wednesday that since the company launched its on-demand streaming service two months ago, CD and download sales through its partnership with Amazon.com have more than doubled.

“Offering free access to music is one thing but finding your way through all that is another,” Ward said. “Music discovery is a lot easier on Last.fm.”

Christian Ward, a Last.fm spokesman, said the company is talking to the labels about rolling back some of the restrictions, presumably the three-play rule.

So Last.fm can take pride in knowing it was early to an offering that some music fans might find useful–albeit one that isn’t exclusive to Last.fm.

The Snap, which debuted at CTIA 2009, is a messaging-centric smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard and a feature called Inner Circle that lets you prioritize messages based on your preferences. It also offers Microsoft Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server, as well as support for POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts.

(Source: Information Week via Phonescoop)

Aside from the messaging options, the Windows Mobile 6.1 device includes Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 2-megapixel camera, a microSD expansion slot, and more. The HTC Snap for Sprint will also be available from Best Buy for an unsubsidized price of $519.

Sprint’s summer of hot phone releases continues. In addition to the
Palm Pre and just-announced
RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630, the carrier has confirmed that it will offer the HTC Snap on June 21 for $149.99 with a two-year contract. (This news surfaced last week, but I’m just catching up after being out for a couple of days.)

HTC Snap

Still, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been any in-depth study about how to find and eradicate terrorists in virtual worlds, and there’s been no doubt in my mind that such efforts would come along one day soon. And I bid the government the best of luck in finding such evil-doers, because who wouldn’t?

So, I’d like to urge the people working on Reynard to tread carefully and be sure about what they’re looking at. If they’re not familiar with virtual worlds, they will certainly encounter behavior that is well outside the norm–and it could be tempting to categorize someone dressed as a jihadi as actually being one. Yet it may just be a 14-year-old from Dubuque having some (admittedly poorly expressed) fun with his or her friends.

In 2003, I wrote my first story about the State of Play conference, a confab held at New York Law School that looked into, among other things, the cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds. Since then, there have been dozens of such conferences, symposiums, meetings, and gatherings to look into this exact subject. Just because no one from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence chose to attend those meetings doesn’t mean the discussions weren’t happening.

That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but to date there’s been no proof.

The Data Mining Report continues, suggesting, “The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral, and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.”

This leads me to several thoughts.

As Singel writes, the so-called Data Mining Report (click here for PDF) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence includes information about “Reynard,” a “seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the Intelligence Community.”

Still, the possibility is certainly there, and it can’t hurt to have the government spend a little time and money investigating techniques for rooting out any potential terrorist activity in environments like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 4, Second Life, or elsewhere.

But what’s important is that virtual worlds not be painted with the brush of terrorism before there’s any actual evidence that such activity is going on there.

Over at Wired today, the eagle-eyed Ryan Singel has a story about a new U.S. government initiative intended to root out terrorists working and playing in virtual worlds.

First, it is by no means a new theory that terrorists either might someday use, or perhaps already are using, virtual worlds to gather, train, look for love or whatever else might occur to them. Of course, it’s only a theory. No one has yet proven anything untoward is happening or will happen.

A screen shot of Harding's video as it appears on YouTube.

“The camera always thought it was falling and wouldn’t record,” Harding said. “I had to go up again with a solid-state memory card and we recorded with that.”

(Credit:
Wherethehellismatt.com)

(Credit:
YouTube)

“Some people will probably accuse me of spreading humanist propaganda,” Harding said. “Everybody knows that we can all be small-minded and petty. But we also like to be reminded once and a while about what we can be at our best.”

While much of the mainstream press is just discovering Harding, he has been well known among the early adopter crowd for some time. His first installment of “Where The Hell Is Matt” was one of YouTube’s earliest viral-video blockbusters.

To this end, Harding upgraded his camera for this world tour. He shot his original 4-minute clip with a point-and-shoot camera, the Canon Powershot SD500. He loved that it was small and easy to carry. This time, however, Harding decided to pay $800 for a Sony Handycam HDR-SR8.

Matt Harding first earned fame two years ago by filming himself dancing in exotic locales all over the world and posting the video montage to YouTube. Everyone from the The New York Times to National Public Radio has swooned over Harding’s latest clip since it first appeared on YouTube three weeks ago.

For example, go to Wherethehellismatt.com and check out how much better the YouTube embeddable player appears on his site than it does at YouTube. Harding doesn’t like to talk about it but he went online and found a piece of script that improved the quality of YouTube’s embeddable player.

Harding’s real significance is that he’s one of the best examples of how YouTube enables anyone to communicate with audiences across the globe. And what’s the message Harding is trying to communicate?

Harding only had good things to say about the camera’s durability and ease of use. The hard disk drive camera did have one drawback, but it’s one that only someone like Harding is going to encounter.

In an interview with CNET News, Harding, a former video-game developer, describes himself as a tech enthusiast and credits software, gadgets, and the Internet with helping to turn his videos into blockbusters.

A safety feature prevents the camera from writing to the hard drive anytime it senses the camera is falling. This proved to be an obstacle when Harding was flying above Nellis Airspace, Nev., during a weightlessness exercise.

Who can blame him for being less than loyal to YouTube? He danced his ass off for 14 months in 46 countries (4 didn’t make the final movie) and shot everything in high definition. Don’t all filmmakers want to showcase their work in the best possible quality?

Here’s something else that Harding was sheepish about talking about. In addition to YouTube, he posted the clip to Vimeo, a YouTube competitor. He says if people want to watch the video in the highest quality, they should watch it there. “Vimeo’s video looks phenomenal,” he said.

“There is a way to force high quality into YouTube’s embed,” Harding said. “I felt a little bad about doing it.”

Sure, the YouTube video “Where the Hell is Matt 2008″ is clever and maybe even inspirational, but what’s been overlooked in all the hoopla over the clip is how technology contributed to its popularity.

Yet, Harding has earned a modest level of international celebrity from his videos. Fans showed up to dance with Harding in places like Seoul, Lisbon, and Tel Aviv. He said more than 2,000 people in total (Madrid saw the biggest turnout, with 200).

Aside from the gadgets, technology’s most important contribution, of course, was turning someone like Harding into star in the first place. He’s a former video-game developer from Connecticut. He’s neither a trained filmmaker nor dancer (that won’t surprise anyone who’s seen him dance).

In less than a month, the video has been viewed more than 5 million times.

That may not sound like a lot, but Harding didn’t do much advertising other than announce on his blog where and when he was showing up.

On the heels of the gaming-oriented Gateway FX7020, we get a few more desktop announcements this morning from recent Acer-acquisition Gateway, as well as from its eMachines subsidiary.

As for eMachines, it remains committed to bringing you dual-core PCs on the cheap. We’re glad to see that it has embraced AMD’s full-fledged Athlon X2 chips, rather than the half-baked AMD Sempron chips it had lying around the warehouse. The T5246 offers the Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 2GB of RAM, a 400GB hard drive, and a dual-format DVD burner for $430. That’s about as much computer as you would need for basic
Windows Vista usage. Further down the budget scale, eMachines still has a single-core PC to offer with the $350 T3642 and its Athlon 64 4000+ chip.

The Gateway GM5664, depicted with a monitor not included in the $1,150 price tag.

(Credit:
Gateway)