Daily Technology News

Microsoft’s chief environmental strategistist, Robert Bernard, spoke publicly for one of the first times this week, giving some insight into Microsoft’s green” strategy.

Bernard was named to the position about four months ago after working with Microsoft 10 years on partnerships with other IT companies.

While other IT companies have launched “green IT” initiatives, Microsoft has been relatively quiet.

For example, IBM’s Big Green Innovations, launched last year, is focused on data center energy efficiency but also includes consulting activities, such as advising companies on how to reduce carbon emissions within their supply chain.

During a session at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, Bernard indicated that reducing energy consumption of software in the industry overall is one of his primary objectives.

He said that between three and five percent of energy consumption comes from software and that Microsoft is looking to work with its partners, notably hardware providers, to address the other 95 percent. (see a video of his talk at ZDNet.)

Windows Vista has power-management features that will automatically take a computer from consuming over 100 watts to three watts to five watts when not used within 10 to 30 minutes, he said.

“Most people perceive that when they are running a screensaver, they are using less energy. The reality is they are still using between 100 and 250 watts to power that screensaver,” he said.

In corporate data centers, energy consumption has become a significant concern for corporations because of rising electricity costs. Businesses are also increasingly trying to measure and reduce their carbon footprint.

Windows Server 2008, which was launched on Wednesday of this week, has embedded intelligence to match a given workload with the appropriate amount of energy.

“I don’t need a Ferrari to get across San Francisco,” he said. The energy-management in Windows Server allows it to operate more like a Prius.

Consolidating servers, often through virtualization, is also a major push at many corporations, which lowers electricity use.

Software plays a crucial role in managing the energy grid as well, particularly as distributed forms of power generation are added to existing centralized power plants.

“Imagine if you have (a huge increase in) micro generation and the existing macro generation. The software required to manage that system and tie it to us as individuals is massively complicated,” Bernard said.

Speaking to investors and entrepreneurs, he said that a software infrastructure to integrate their inventions into existing energy networks needs to be created.

According to Mozilla, Firefox has now been downloaded over 500 million times. hey don?t tell us what version of the web browser they talk about so probably they mean all versions together. Mozilla has decided to use this opportunity together with the project FreeRice to give away rice to the world?s poorest people. Mozilla invites to word games which will give money for the project, a word game you will be able to find on freerice.com. The game is a simple word game and each time someone answers right you will give 20 rice corns to FN?s hunger program (UN World Food Program). Mozilla pays with money they get from commercials. Feel free to read more about the project on spreadfirefox.com

When writing earlier this week about Adobe’s sponsoring of the SQLite project, I ran into a complicated issue: is software released into the public domain also open-source software?

I have an editor who hates headlines with question marks, but I’m afraid this time it’s appropriate, because even experts disagree.

For background, software or other material in the public domain simply means that it’s not copyrighted. Requirements to meet the official Open Source Definition are listed by the Open Source Initiative. Two programmers, Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens, founded the OSI about 10 years ago to formalize and codify the open-source idea as it branched off the free-software movement Richard Stallman founded in the 1980s, and OSI lists 68 compliant licenses.

Richard Hipp, who founded the SQLite database project in 2000 as a public-domain project, believes it does qualify as open-source software.

“I’ve had a number of conversations on this topic with corporate lawyers for companies that are actively using SQLite. The consensus there seems to be that ‘public domain’ is valid and is a proper subset of ‘open source’–except in France and Germany where the concept of ‘public domain’ is not recognized,” he told me in an e-mail discussion prompted by the Adobe story.

But not so fast. Take the view of Mark Radcliffe, the intellectual property attorney who’s general counsel to the Open Source Initiative.

When I asked Radcliffe if public domain software was open-source, he was clear: “No. Truly public domain software is no longer protected by copyright, thus it cannot have a license which would impose the terms necessary to comply with any of the open source licenses,” he said.

Agreeing with him is Louis Rosen, an attorney with Rosenlaw and Einschlag who previously led OSI’s legal work and who still is involved. He directed me to an older but still relevant piece he wrote about why the public domain isn’t a license.

“‘Public domain’ will never be a license. It actually means ‘No license required,’” Rosen said. “Software that is ‘dedicated to the public’ or ‘to the public domain’ is pretty safe. I just worry a bit when people or companies give software away in such an amateurish way, without understanding that licenses or covenants are far more efficient and effective.”

While “public domain” isn’t a license on OSI’s official list of open-source licenses, Perens said it’s not far off: “Software that has been formally dedicated to the public domain through some sort of written statement meets the requirements of the Open Source definition only if the source code is available. Surprisingly, ‘public-domain’ binary-only software exists in some odd corners of the Net.”

And Raymond added, “Public-domain software qualifies…The users are guaranteed all the redistribution and reuse rights that the Open Source Definition seeks to secure by the fact that there is no owner to enforce restrictions.”

Moving from the theoretical realm into the practical, though, the SQLite project appears more open-source than not. The project’s source code is available without restriction, and programmers who contribute code it to it must explicitly declare their contribution is given to the public domain for perpetuity, which appears to satisfy Perens’ opinions.

(Credit: Corbin)

Not everyone has the kind of decor that’s appropriate for a couch made from a
vintage British sportscar. Sometimes an American model is much more fitting. And what could be more classic than a 1957 Corvette?

Corbin has made a loveseat modeled after the iconic roadster for those intimate occasions at home, complete with “a romantic undercarriage lighting with an 110v lighting fixtures tucked underneath, tail lights, and exhaust pipes,” according to BornRich. There’s even a “smart dimmer” in the armrest’s storage compartment for the perfect Barry White moment. And for those times when you’re alone (more likely), that same space can be used to stow the remote.

The Department of Energy announced on Wednesday its choice of three venture capital firms to send promising clean tech entrepreneurs to collaborate with national laboratories.

The government’s new Entrepreneur in Residence plan is designed to speed the development of the green technology sector.

“Government has to cultivate the conditions for these technologies to thrive,” U.S. assistant secretary of energy Alexander Karsner told attendees of the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco. “We felt very strongly we had to build bridges over the commercialization valley of death.”

The venture capitalists include Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers to work with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado; ARCH Venture Partners to partner with Sandia National Laboratory in California; and Foundation Capital to collaborate with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

“This is the most exciting time I’ve seen at the lab for commercialization,” said Tom Williams, director of technology transfer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Col.

Each firm has twelve months to assist one startup at a time in working directly with laboratory staff, aiming to spin off successful clean tech companies. The Department of Energy will offer $100,000 per entrepreneur for overhead costs, with additional funds provided by venture capitalists. After each year-long period ends, the government will newly select venture firms for the ongoing program.

“This is a brilliant program,” Paul Thurk, principal of Chicago’s ARCH Venture Partners, told CNET. “It forces us to focus on one particular institution.”

Areas that interest Thurk include energy efficiency, green building and smart grid systems.

Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers of Menlo Park, Calif., has some 30 clean tech companies in its portfolio, with a particular emphasis on solar and biofuels, said managing partner Ray Lane. And his firm would also likely consider for the national labs effort entrepreneurs in energy efficiency and storage, among other technologies.

Steve Vassallo, a principal at Foundation Capital of Menlo Park, noted that it usually takes up to six months to help a start-up get its feet off the ground, but he hopes that the program can spin off successful companies in half that time.

The sooner a new venture can be established within the year-long residency program, the sooner a new entrepreneur can be sent to a national laboratory.

“We’ve had that inertia for quite a long time, so much so that many of you turned away from Washington,” said Karsner, telling the conference nevertheless not to consider the government’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gases as too little, too late.

He called the public-private partnership the first of its kind in the world. The United States and Japan–whose ministry of trade’s clean tech support most echoes that in this country–are responsible for 80 percent of global research and development, Karsner told CNET.

A view of space from Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft on Wednesday gave TED conference-goers–an audience typically filled with stars like Goldie Hawn or Forest Whitaker–a close-up of real celestial bodies with its new virtual telescope.

Microsoft demonstrated long-awaited software called WorldWide Telescope to an audience at the exclusive Technology Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, Calif., a four-day confab that started Wednesday. It’s unclear whether the demo of the astronomy technology made anyone in the audience cry like former Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble, but the images (shown above) were certainly stellar.

WorldWide Telescope, similar to the sky feature in Google Earth but much more expansive, is a virtual map of space that features tens of millions of digital images from sources like the Hubble telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project championed by missing Microsoft researcher Jim Gray (to whom Microsoft dedicated the WorldWide Telescope on Wednesday). From the desktop, the technology lets people pan and zoom across the night sky, zeroing in on the Big Dipper, Mars, or the first galaxies to emerge after the Big Bang. It also lets people call up related data, stories, or context about what they’re seeing from sources online.

Harvard University astrophysicist Roy Gould, who demonstrated the telescope with Microsoft principal researcher Curtis Wong, said that that the technology holds promise for research and for humanity.

“The WorldWide Telescope takes the best images from the greatest telescopes on Earth…and in space…and assembles them into a seamless, holistic view of the universe,” Gould, of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, said at the conference.

“This new resource will change the way we do astronomy…the way we teach astronomy….and, most importantly, I think it’s going to change the way we see ourselves in the universe.”

Microsoft also unveiled a promotional site for the telescope project Wednesday, but the free technology won’t be live until sometime this spring. Without the tears, several academics talk up the telescope in video on the site. Here is a sampling of the awe-struck sentiment: “It’s the universe that you yourself can voyage through.” “It’s a magic carpet.” “It’s an example of where science and science education is going.” “My hope is to have it on every kid’s desktop.”

Microsoft has now ended the beta testing of their net storage service called Windows Live SkyDrive. The service has been launched in 38 countries so far. With Windows Live SkyDrive you got the possibility to password protect files in personal folders. There is also a folder where you can share files with a special group of users or make them available for everyone.
This new service in full version will contain improvement like:

you will find Windows Live SkyDrive on skydrive.live.com.

Sun Microsystems said Tuesday that it has completed its acquisition of open-source database company MySQL for about $1 billion–and now is turning its attention to other acquisitions.

“In my view it’s the most important acquisition in Sun’s history,” Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz said on a conference call Tuesday.

Sun paid about $800 million in cash and $200 million in stock for MySQL. Although it’s a big open-source acquisition for the server and software company, it won’t be the last, Schwartz said.

“Those companies that have built good high-integrity communities, broad distribution, and some measure of commercial success are those we’re going to be interested in,” Schwartz said, and there are many that fit that bill. “We believe we’re a natural home to a lot of them, and we’re going to be putting our balance sheet to work to make that the case.”

Marten Mickos, who had been MySQL’s chief executive, now is senior vice president of Sun’s database group, reporting to Rich Green, Sun’s executive vice president of software.

MySQL may have been Sun’s most important acquisition, but it wasn’t its biggest. In 2005, Sun spent a net amount of $3.1 billion to acquire StorageTek, a tape storage system maker with a large customer base and revenue stream.

Schwartz wouldn’t compare the merits of the two acquisitions, but indicated that MySQL has a strong potential: “The customer base it brings to Sun measures in the millions if not the tens of millions. There are very few companies on Earth that have that capacity to create opportunity for Sun,” he said.

Mickos estimated that there are 12 million instances of MySQL installed at present. It’s impossible to know exactly, since copies may be downloaded for free and distributed any number of ways.

Sun still will support Derby, PostgreSQL

With the new title, Mickos will lead not only MySQL work, but also other open-source database projects that Sun supports, including Derby and PostgreSQL. Sun will continue its work with those projects, Green said in an interview.

“We fully intend to keep those programs going at the same speed as we did before,” Green said. Developers want different packages for different situations, and “Sun is big enough to have more than one going at the same time.”

However, MySQL is clearly the priority. For example, the sales support will be much broader than with PostgreSQL when it comes to selling MySQL support subscriptions, Green said.

“Those subscriptions will be sold by the entire Sun software sales force. We’ve amped up the scale and reach of the sales organization that previously was a much more limited size,” Green said.

Schwartz argued the acquisition will make MySQL more palatable to big customers. “The single biggest impediment to success in the marketplace (has been) their comparative inability to provide peace of mind to enterprises that want global service and support,” Schwartz said.

For his part, Mickos chose to look at the potential rivals more as allies. “I believed always the enemy is not another open-source database,” he said. “We always had a good relationship with the PostgreSQL team.”

PostgreSQL is often positioned as more of a traditional database package comparable to Oracle’s dominant and proprietary product. MySQL, while steadily accumulating more features useful for that area, has been geared more for what the company has seen as new database usage such as new-generation Internet sites. MySQL is used at the core of Facebook, Google, and YouTube.

Mickos said Sun doesn’t plan to move MySQL more toward the traditional database market. “We’re following Wayne Gretzky’s advice: skate to where puck will be,” he said, mentioning “Web services, Web 2.0, telecom, and mobile spaces” as examples.

Faster development, and eventually GPLv3

Being part of Sun will speed development of new features such as Falcon, MySQL’s project for a new storage engine used within the overall database, Mickos said. “We now get access to abilities and resources we didn’t have before–scaling, performance, memormy management, input-output. That’s why we hope to be able to accelerate the road map.”

It won’t change MySQL’s multiplatform approach, though; the database runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, Mac OS X, and many other operating systems.

MySQL is governed by version 2 of the General Public License (GPL) since 2000, but the company likely will move to GPLv3, Mickos said.

“We’ve been part of drafting GPLv3. We like the license. We think it’s better than GPLv2 and takes care of some of its weakeness,” Mickos said. “But (GPLv2) is the most successful license ever. It will take time to replace it and to move over to next generation, GPLv3. I believe we’ll do it at some point, but we haven’t decided on a specific point in time yet.”

Update 9:15 a.m. PT: I added more details about Sun’s acquisition plans. Update 10:30 a.m. PT: I added more information about Sun’s acquisition history, MySQL integration details, and licensing and product plans.

In a conversation with Martin Thall, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Automotive Business Unit, he laid out a vision for the future of infotainment systems in cars, which included connected services supported by in-car advertising. Mr. Thall suggested that five years from now, car infotainment systems will be networked and provide the latest information on local services and traffic, as just two examples. This sort of car system should offer daily relevance, so that you could have it give you the best way home from work each day. Or, you could use local search to find a particular item for sale, or a particular restaurant, and the car would give the best route to that location. Your preferences for the route could vary from quickest time, the most scenic, or the route that will cause the least amount of emissions and save the most gas.

But, as Mr. Thall points out in a lesson learned from OnStar, supporting the infrastructure for a connected car is expensive. As an alternative to making consumers pay a subscription fee for their connected car, the navigation screen could display ads or businesses could offer incentives for you to stop in, such as Starbucks loading a free MP3 track into your car if you stop by. While Web advertising is measured in pennies or fractions of pennies per impression, Mr. Thall says “click-through value for in-car advertising could be measured in dollars”, because the driver is already out of the house and is more likely to follow through on the ad’s suggestion. Although the idea of ads in cars may sound like an invasion of personal space, drivers are already very used to the concept. Drivers see advertising along the roads every day and hear it over the radio. Having ads appear on an infotainment system wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, and could be the incentive to more quickly connect cars to useful services like real-time traffic.

We gained other insights during our conversation with Mr. Thall. Microsoft’s automotive efforts are rapidly gaining ground after a slow start, and the company has no major competition in this area. The Automotive Business Unit, part of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, has two products: the Windows Automotive platform and the Microsoft Automotive platform, the latter including Sync. Many in-dash navigation units are built on Windows Automotive, although the interfaces are designed to completely hide that fact from the user. Sync is the more recent success story. Mr. Thall’s philosophy behind that technology is to keep it very cost effective and put it in mass market brands, such as current partners Ford and Fiat. In North America, Ford has an exclusive on the technology until November, 2008. Mr. Thall says to expect other car makers to announce their own versions of the Microsoft Automotive platform this year, offering similar features as Sync. In a tantalizing hint, he suggested that, as the technology is already in Europe and North America, Asia is the next logical region. And given the mass market push for the Microsoft Automotive platform, we will go out on a limb and predict that Toyota is the next likely partner.

For many new green-tech ventures, Wal-Mart is the ideal customer, sitting on top of the economic food chain of environmentally friendly products.

On Tuesday Wal-Mart and the Cleantech Group launched a Web-based tool that provides a sort of shopping list for Wal-Mart’s sustainability strategy. The Cleantech Group is hosting its Cleantech Venture Forum in San Francisco, which starts on Tuesday.

Which “innovative ideas” Wal-Mart is seeking is instructive because it points to large corporate demand for clean-tech products.

The list: