Apple's .Mac Challenges Microsoft's .NET

Grok Headline matches for Apple's .Mac Challenges Microsoft's .NET

Microsoft Challenges Apple's iTunes
Store, But It Isn't There Yet

Microsoft Challenges Apple's iTunes
Store, But It Isn't There Yet 09/02/2004 11:51 AM

Direct and Related Links for 'Microsoft Challenges Apple’s iTunes Store, But It Isn’t There Yet'

In the battle to dominate the emerging business of online music sales, the 800-pound gorilla finally is taking the field. Today, Microsoft rolls out its MSN Music store, directly challenging its nemesis, Apple Computer, which so far has ruled that business. I’ve been testing Microsoft’s new store in advance of today’s launch and comparing it with Apple’s much-praised iTunes music store. While the Microsoft entry has a few nice touches, it is typical of many…

Microsoft's Top Challenges for 2004

Microsoft's Top Challenges for 2004 12/10/2003 03:26 AM

Directions on Microsoft: Microsoft's Top 10 Challenges for 2004.

What do you think are our biggest challenges?

Apple's iPod Lead Creates New
Challenges, Analysts Say

Apple's iPod Lead Creates New
Challenges, Analysts Say 05/04/2004 06:16 PM
The runaway success of the iPod poses a happy problem for Apple that the computer maker has not had in years: how to remain the market favorite, not just the favorite underdog. By Duncan Martell, Reuters (via MyAppleMenu)

PUBPAT Challenges Microsoft's FAT Patent

PUBPAT Challenges Microsoft's FAT Patent 04/16/2004 12:51 AM

Apple's iPod Lead Creates New
Challenges, Analysts Say (Reuters)

Apple's iPod Lead Creates New
Challenges, Analysts Say (Reuters) 05/04/2004 03:31 PM
Reuters - The runaway success of the iPod poses a happy problem for Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL.O) that the computer maker has not had in years: how to remain the market favorite, not just the favorite underdog.

Researchers Outline Microsoft's Top 10
Challenges For 2004

Researchers Outline Microsoft's Top 10
Challenges For 2004 12/24/2003 12:13 PM
Even giants have problems--and gigantic software maker Microsoft has at least 10 of them.

Group challenges Microsoft's patent for
FAT file system

Group challenges Microsoft's patent for
FAT file system 04/16/2004 05:15 PM
A tiny nonprofit watchdog group is challenging Microsoft Corp.'s hold on a 7-year-old patent for the FAT file system.

Software startup challenges Microsoft's
Office monopoly

Software startup challenges Microsoft's
Office monopoly 02/17/2004 01:10 PM
Peoples Daily Online Feb 17 2004 5:03PM GMT

Apple's And Microsoft's Digital Music
Ploys

Apple's And Microsoft's Digital Music
Ploys 06/05/2004 01:17 AM
"This new iPod-iTunes division of Apple has to be self-sufficient and needs adopters on Windows to grow." By Blane Warrene, MacNewsWorld (via MyAppleMenu)

Microsoft's big guns aim at Apple's
online music store

Microsoft's big guns aim at Apple's
online music store 08/30/2004 05:07 PM
San Francisco Chronicle Aug 30 2004 9:07PM GMT

Microsoft's Music Play Aims To Put
Apple's Itunes In Juicer

Microsoft's Music Play Aims To Put
Apple's Itunes In Juicer 12/16/2003 04:25 AM
New York Post Dec 16 2003 3:13AM ET

Microsoft's Music Play Aims To Put
Apple's iTunes In Juicer

Microsoft's Music Play Aims To Put
Apple's iTunes In Juicer 12/16/2003 08:54 PM
"Microsoft isn't interested in selling music. Microsoft is interested in providing technology that proliferates." By Stephen Lynch (New York Post via MyAppleMenu)

Addicted to challenges

Addicted to challenges 12/31/2004 06:35 AM
Express Computer India Dec 31 2004 10:55AM GMT

The Challenges -and Potential- of 3G

The Challenges -and Potential- of 3G 12/29/2003 08:00 PM
Wireless Watch Japan Dec 29 2003 7:37PM ET

Teleconnection Challenges 3G

Teleconnection Challenges 3G 09/20/2004 03:06 AM
3G Sep 20 2004 7:19AM GMT

OpenEvents challenges

OpenEvents challenges 02/05/2005 09:12 PM

Peter Caputa puts it succinctly in

Why OpenEvents Is an Uphill Battle!

I am writing a series of posts on why OpenEvents is an Uphill Battle. I am hoping that this rallies some people to think creatively, and also to realize that if we work together to make this happen, then we will all will benefit much quicker.

So, The first reason that OpenEvents is an uphill battle is because the established players have no incentive to share data. Actually, they have disincentives because there are so many businesses that depend on the data for their revenue stream.

[pc4media]

Whether it's XML or rdf, centralized or distributed - sharing and building on Events as an open, shared kind of micro-content - is leaving the station.

SCO challenges IBM witnesses

SCO challenges IBM witnesses 09/13/2004 04:13 PM
The Linux adversary again demands evidence from Big Blue and cites allegedly contradictory testimony.

The challenges of synching

The challenges of synching 01/04/2004 08:26 PM
I predicted the other day that synching would appear in lots of newsreaders in 2004. (Some have it already, yes, but they don’t have it as I’ve defined it below.)

A good question would be: why isn’t synching already a feature of every newsreader already? It can’t be that hard, right—just read and write from a file somewhere that two copies of your newsreader can access.

I mean, what’s the hold-up? You just need something like a .newsrc. No big deal, it’s an old problem that’s been solved many times before.

Okay, so the rest of this post will be about the challenges in implementing synching.

What is synching?

First we need to define what synching is. It’s really a collection of features and requirements.

1. It’s merging, not cloning, of subscription lists.

2. It also synchs read/unread states of individual items.

3. Your newsreader uploads and downloads your synch data so you don’t have to do it manually with a browser or FTP client or whatever.

4. Your newsreader knows (or at least guesses) when it needs to download and upload synch data.

5. It works between different newsreader software on different operating systems.

I’ll take these one at a time.

Merging

Cloning is easy, merging is hard—but synching has to be merging.

For instance, imagine you have a newsreader at home and one at work. You subscribe to the same feeds—except that at work you also subscribe to some at-work-only feeds that you can’t get at home.

So when you get into work in the morning, you want to synch your data from last night at home. If it’s just cloning your subscription list, then the additional at-work-only feeds would get deleted, since you aren’t subscribed to them at home. Since we’re merging, not cloning, your at-work-only feeds do not get deleted.

But this leads to an interesting problem: what happens if you unsubscribe from a feed at home? The synching mechanism won’t delete it from your work subscription list, because for all it knows that feed could be a work-only feed.

And there’s another entire set of problems that come up because for most newsreaders the subscription list is an outline rather than a flat list. Merging hierarchies is far more difficult than merging flat lists.

Synching read/unread states of news items

This is possibly the toughest of the challenges.

In an ideal world, you can identify every item in an RSS feed with a unique id of some sort. So the synch data would be able to pair a unique ID with its read/unread status.

But not all versions of RSS have the concept of a unique ID. And, even in the versions that do have unique IDs, they’re not mandatory, and lots of feeds don’t use them. (And sometimes feeds have a terrible bug: they have unique IDs that aren’t actually unique.)

So, in the absence of a unique ID, how do you identify an item in a way that will work every single time? Answer: you can’t. There is no solution that will work every single time. (And this is why sometimes you notice in your newsreader items that are unread that you know you’ve read. They’ve been edited.)

Even if you include an entire item, all its text and links and various elements, it’s possible that the item was edited between leaving home and arriving at work.

So instead the synching has to do the best it can. Any format will probably use links and titles and whatever else so newsreaders can do a best guess. (I suspect that most developers hate situations like this, by the way, and it may be the single biggest reason why synching isn’t yet universal among newsreaders.)

Uploading and downloading

You’ll want to tell your newsreader where to save your synch data so you can get it at home and at work.

You might say, why not use .Mac? Because not everyone has an account. Because your newsreader at work might be on Windows. (And there are some other technical reasons which I’ll skip.)

Why not use FTP? Or HTTP-upload? Or...?

The answer is probably that a couple different methods may need to be made available. (FTP and HTTP-upload seem like obvious candidates, but I’m just guessing.)

But here’s the deal: I doubt that every newsreader already includes code for uploading files by the various methods people will want to use. Sure, there are libraries available, but newsreader developers will still have to write code and do a bunch of testing. Even a seemingly small thing like this still takes time and effort.

Knowing when to upload and download

This may be the easiest part.

When you launch your newsreader, it can ask if you want it to synch. It would then download your synch data from wherever and do the synch.

Similarly, when you quit, it could ask if you want to upload your synch data.

There may be more sophisticated algorithms that would make sense too, but the above is I think a good minimum.

Different newsreaders, different operating systems

This means getting a bunch of developers to agree on a format for synch data. That’s probably the easy part—the hard part will be testing to make sure X can synch with Y and Y can synch with Z and Z can synch with X.

That, by the way, is where you come in.

Calypso Wi-Fi Challenges 3G

Calypso Wi-Fi Challenges 3G 12/03/2003 06:24 AM
3G Dec 3 2003 4:46AM ET

FOAF challenges

FOAF challenges 01/09/2004 09:52 PM

FOAF challenges.

FOAF challenges

Some interesting discussion has been triggered by Jon Udell's comments on FOAF. I agree with Edd and Dan that FOAF is about more than social networking and have said as much here on several occasions. Personally I see two problems with FOAF neither of them big.

Firstly the name causes people to adopt certain expectations about it's intended usage particularly with general surge of interest (fad?) in social software. I certainly wouldn't advocate a name change but, as the exchange with Udell has demonstrated, we need to take care to present FOAF correctly.

The second problem is just about data. Because there is no central repository of FOAF data, it's harder to create FOAF applications: you either need to run a scutter yourself to collect up what's available, or generate FOAF out of the back-end of another site. Of course you can also hang out on #foaf and badger someone (e.g. Jim Ley or Matt Biddulph) to give you a data export; that's what I did.

I firmly believe that playing with the FOAF data that's out in the wild will generate the most interesting applications, and provide essential implementation feedback on the vocabulary itself.

So I'm going to try encouraging folk to regularly and visibly publish the results of their scutter runs. An "offical" data set hung of the FOAF homepage would also be useful. This should hopefully encourage the development of more FOAF applications.

Incidentally I mentally classify those applications as follows:

• FOAF-generating -- e.g. FOAF-a-Matic, ecademy, TypePad, etc. Applications that generate FOAF but don't typically process it to perform any useful function. These are an important step in producing a critical mass of data
  
• FOAF-gathering -- e.g. a Scutter, FOAFbot, FOAFnaut. Applications that harvest the web of FOAF data to build a data repository. Functionality is then built around this repository
  
• FOAF-consuming -- e.g. FOAF explorer/viewer, Dashboard, Planet RDF. Applications that read specific FOAF data, to fulfill some function. FOAF-gathering applications also typically consume data in this way -- to manually refresh their repository -- but I'm thinking of slightly different application scenarios, e.g. automating web site registration and preference maintenance, generating a project or community blog, etc.
  

For me this classification separates out some of the implementation issues: a FOAF-consuming application doesn't typically have to worry about attribution, trust, etc. The data is coming from a limited number of sources. FOAF-gathering applications have to deal with a much more difficult set of problems. [Lost Boy]

New Year, Same Challenges

New Year, Same Challenges 01/08/2004 08:27 PM

New challenges for Google: report

New challenges for Google: report 06/07/2004 06:51 PM
The Age,Australia-39 minutes agoAs it readies its share offering, Google dominates the internet search market but faces challenges as it tries to broaden its services, research firm Standard ...

Nepal ex-PM challenges emergency

Nepal ex-PM challenges emergency 04/02/2005 09:12 AM
Former PM Koirala demands the return of democracy in Nepal a day after being freed from house arrest.

The Direction of Peace and its
Challenges

The Direction of Peace and its
Challenges 04/03/2005 07:58 AM
Arabic Media Internet Network Apr 3 2005 12:37PM GMT

TechEd drills into IT challenges

TechEd drills into IT challenges 05/28/2004 06:33 PM
Microsoft trained its focus on concrete challenges facing IT at its TechEd 2004 conference last week, rolling out products designed to enhance security, productivity, and integration.

Four Key Challenges for Operators in 3G
Rollouts

Four Key Challenges for Operators in 3G
Rollouts 09/15/2004 03:34 AM
3G Sep 15 2004 7:19AM GMT

The Challenges Facing Bell TV

The Challenges Facing Bell TV 04/04/2005 06:22 AM
The fact that the Baby Bell telcos are now rushing to offer television over fiber is nothing new. Plenty of articles have been written about it, and it seems like this one is a little late to the game. However, it does raise some interesting points about the challenges the telcos face in reaching a point where they'll be competitive with cable TV. First, is that even after they spend billions rolling out fiber (to the home, or for the cheap Bells, the node) they have to sign the necessary content deals to have channels to offer. Since the content providers know the position the Bells are in (they absolutely need this content), the rates are going to be on the high side -- which, in turn, means that the subscription fees for end-users are going to be large, or the telcos will take some hefty losses on the service (which is exactly what's likely to happen in the short-term). However, it's also going to limit the flexibility the telcos have -- so they won't be in a position to do more creative pricing (like some of their cable competitors) to attack the market. While everyone knew that it would be easier for the cable companies to jump into the voice market than it would be for the telcos to jump into the TV market, the amount of time it's taken the telcos to act, combined with these hurdles, suggests that telco TV isn't going to be a money maker for quite some time -- if ever. At this point, the best the telcos can hope for is that telco TV will provide other benefits, such as reduced churn in other services.

Microsoft Challenges Google

Microsoft Challenges Google 07/30/2004 12:24 PM

AI Challenges Face the new Pope

AI Challenges Face the new Pope 04/12/2005 01:03 PM
A TechNewsWorld article presents the technology challenges that will be faced by the new Pope in the coming years. Among them is the problem of artificial intelligence. "If the Church believes strongly that a woman who has lost brain function is still alive and a fetus at its earliest stages is human, what will they think about a virtual something that emulates a person to the highest degree?" Or how about a physical something like a robot that's as intelligent as a human? Among the other technological dilemmas facing the new Pope will be cloning, cybernetics, medical technology, virtual reality, and even blogging. Considering it took them something like 250 years to apologize to Galileo and sort out that little Earth moving around the Sun thing, I hope they're up to taking on the problem intelligent machines.

Easyjet challenges KLM takeover

Easyjet challenges KLM takeover 05/18/2004 10:13 AM
Budget airline Easyjet asks the European Court of Justice to annul Air France's takeover of Dutch carrier KLM.

Selling Wi-Fi presents serious
challenges

Selling Wi-Fi presents serious
challenges 06/16/2004 10:15 AM

N.Y. Co. Challenges Spyware Control Act

N.Y. Co. Challenges Spyware Control Act 06/11/2004 08:01 AM
San Jose Mercury News Jun 11 2004 12:32PM GMT

Herbicide Ban Faces Challenges

Herbicide Ban Faces Challenges 12/30/2003 06:10 AM
Malaysian plantation workers suffering the effects of paraquat hope a phased national ban on the herbicide survives challenges by chemical companies and planters. An EU approval works against them.

MoD challenges Porton Down case

MoD challenges Porton Down case 04/19/2005 03:48 AM
The government challenges a verdict of "unlawful killing" over the death of an RAF serviceman who underwent nerve gas tests in 1953.

Nortel Challenges Startups

Nortel Challenges Startups 11/01/2003 03:10 PM
Nortel's trials for mesh networking backhaul could threaten unknowns with similar products: Strix, FireTide, BelAir, Tropos, and others use wireless backhaul -- often 802.11a -- to create clouds or islands of access without bringing a wired connection to each location. But Nortel's product sounds similar and has their marketing and brand behind it....

Users see promises, challenges with BPM

Users see promises, challenges with BPM 12/04/2003 05:59 PM
While technical issues are fairly easy to handle, changing a company's business thinking can be harder, said users at this week's DCI Performance Management Conference.

Jackson challenges Bush

Jackson challenges Bush 07/26/2004 02:06 PM

US challenges IT industry on
cybersecurity

US challenges IT industry on
cybersecurity 12/04/2003 08:28 AM
Computer Weekly Dec 4 2003 7:16AM ET

Google Offering on Course Despite
Several Challenges

Google Offering on Course Despite
Several Challenges 08/10/2004 09:46 PM
Google said it would end the registration period for its widely anticipated initial public offering and start the bidding "soon thereafter."
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Apple's .Mac Challenges Microsoft's .NET

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