up-business.com

This Talbot-Lago T150C SS Figoni et Falaschi Coupe dates from 1938. The C stands for course, French for racing; the SS for Super Sports, used to indicate a shorter variant of the curvaceous design.

The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance event Sunday featured dozens of decades-old cars in pristine condition in a competition and show that’s been held since 1950 at the prestigious golf course near Monterey, Calif.

This grille is the business end of a 1930 452 V-16 Cadillac Fleetwood Sport Phaeton's engine, which has a displacement of 452 cubic inches.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Ever wonder just what powers a high-end race car? Porsche revealed this custom-built eight-cylinder engine in the historic cars area.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The green and copper exterior of this 1941 Chrysler LeBaron Thunderbolt convertible was far less understated than most of the older cars at the Concours d'Elegance.

The show draws thousands of attendees, who also get to see a number of cutting-edge concept cars. Here, though, is a look at some of the historic models.

Development and further study of this prototype might finally answer the pressing question: could a mobile heart monitor actually save lives?

I can’t help but pay homage to my former colleague and lunchtime running partner Bill Goggins at Wired magazine, who may have benefited greatly from this kind of technology. Just moments after waving jovially for cameras in the San Francisco marathon in 2006, the 43-year-old former deputy editor collapsed at mile 24 and died of apparent heart failure.

(Credit:
IMEC)

IMEC's mobile heart monitor uses a low-power amplifier and 2.4 GHz network.

IMEC, which partnered with the Netherlands-based Holst Centre to develop this ECG prototype, says the algorithm copes with baseline wander, electromyography (electrical impulses of muscles), movement, and sound. It achieved “best-in-class” performances, with 99.8 percent sensitivity and 99.7 percent predictivity.

While the ECG necklace could be used for the permanent screening of the elderly, and of people with cardiovascular disorders, healthy athletes might also find the data useful in measuring and analyzing their own hearts under the duress of extreme sport.

The necklace contains IMEC’s proprietary “ultra-low power analog readout ASIC” (application-specific integrated circuit), relying on a low-power commercial radio/microprocessor platform. A heartbeat detection algorithm is embedded in that processor, and a second ultra-low power microcontroller transmits data wirelessly from the necklace to a computer within 10 miles. (If the computer is not within range, a memory module stores this data until it can be transmitted.)

Mobile heart monitoring devices have tended to suffer from inaccuracies due to the nature of being, well, mobile; they’ve always had trouble dealing with inputs such as high-level noises and abrupt movements. The electrocardiogram, or ECG, necklace unveiled by Belgium-based IMEC at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference in Minneapolis Wednesday boasts long-term monitoring of cardiac performance with astonishing accuracy.

“I’m planning to introduce a bill,” said Rep. Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat who heads a House oversight committee. He said his legislation would limit the use of peer-to-peer software on all computer networks operated by the federal government or its contractors.

Boback said his company found the Secret Service’s evacuation plans for the first lady and motorcade routes. (See an interview with Tiversa about Marine One documents found on a peer-to-peer network this spring.)

The two-and-a-half hour hearing singled out LimeWire, which is probably the highest-profile P2P client in use today. LimeWire is distributed by Manhattan-based Lime Wire LLC (which sells a more featureful version called LimeWire Pro) and it uses the BitTorrent and Gnutella networks.

Sensitive files like Secret Service safehouse locations, military rosters, and IRS tax returns can still be found on file-sharing networks, according to a report to a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Wednesday.

In many cases, that’s because federal government employees or contractors installed peer-to-peer software on their computers without paying attention to which documents would be shared, Robert Boback, the chief executive of Tiversa, told the panel.

He added later: “It’s not unreasonable to expect that people who install file-sharing software want to share files.”

Other suggestions were more extreme. Rep. Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat who’s more technically-inclined than most politicians (he has a doctorate in physics), said “the nuclear option is to block the Gnutella protocol” on a national basis.

It didn’t work. “It is chilling what the public now has available to it,” Towns said. “The idea that you can look at the first lady’s information, where she’s going, how she’s getting there. Tax records, things of that nature…we need to get to the bottom of this.”

Gorton also tried to make a more subtle point: the Gnutella network is an amalgamation of scores of different P2P clients, many of which may have different default settings, and LimeWire shouldn’t be held responsible for someone’s decision to share files using a program written by a different company.

But, Foster acknowledged, that wasn’t likely to work. Another option, he said, would be to create a new version of the Gnutella protocol that allowed only limited clients–that curbed what folders or file types could be shared–to connect to it.

Replied Gorton: “LimeWire does not control the computers of people around the country.”

Lime Group chairman Mark Gorton tried to defuse some of the criticism, saying “the current version of LimeWire does not share any documents by default,” and many security improvements were added in version 5 of the software–released in December 2008–that were absent from version 4.

Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, suggested a similar approach. He wanted to know “whether there’s some legal action that should be taken to protect intellectual property, to protect kids from pornography, to protect classified medical information, national security information.”

That led some politicians to announce that new federal laws were necessary to stop inadvertent file sharing.

“Mr. Gorton, I find your testimony today stunning,” said Rep. Paul Hodes, a New Hampshire Democrat. “You promised us two years ago you were going to fix LimeWire.”

In addition, the Federal Trade Commission should investigate whether P2P software developers are violating the law, and the Obama administration should “undertake a national campaign to educate consumers about the dangers of file sharing software,” Towns said. (In April, Towns’ committee informed the FTC it had reopened an investigation into inadvertent file sharing.)

Not helping was the fact that Gorton testified at an earlier hearing in July 2007 on the same topic.

However, a “humanitarian” version of the “cluster bomb” may head-off some objections to their continued production, or at least provide cover for those who want to keep them in the inventory. Billed as safer alternative to cluster munitions, Sensor fuzed weapons (SFW) contain independent self-destruct features based on altitude, time elapsed, and a battery “time-out” that shuts down all functions if no targets are detected within minutes of deployment, according to manufacture Textron Defense Systems. (Video)

While 98 countries have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, only 14 have ratified it; Japan being the most recent. Thirty are required for the ban to become legally binding. However, Albania and Luxembourg are on board, so it’s only a question of time.

As with landmines and napalm, cluster munitions are decidedly politically incorrect, and there is a concerted international effort to ban them. Problem is, they’re highly effective, and countries that actually fight wars, like the U.S. and Russia, are loath to give them up.

Cluster bombs are often seeded in the heat of combat, and then forgotten until, in what could be years later, some innocent hoeing his potatoes sets one off. They are generally large bombs that open in mid-flight to scatter dozens or hundreds of smaller sub munitions. In contrast, the SFW’s self-destruct and self neutralization features ensure no unexploded ordinance is left behind, according to Textron.(PDF)

The SFWs contain Textron’s BLU-108 sub munitions and Skeet warheads equipped with dual-mode passive infrared and active laser targeting sensors that use complex algorithms to detect targets over a lofted trajectory. If no target is detected, one or more of the three safety modes is activated. The first two enable the Skeet to self-destruct eight seconds after launch or within 50 feet above the ground. The third is a built-in redundant time-out feature that renders the weapon inert within minutes of hitting the ground.

(Credit:
Textron)

“As responsible citizens, we share in the international community’s concern about the need to limit the impact of war on civilian populations, particularly when the battle is over and hazardous unexploded ordnance remains,” the company says. “We are committed to minimizing civilian losses during conflict and eliminating casualties when the fighting is done.”

Others smack their microwaves when, commanded to heat some old spaghetti bolognese, they get stuck with 45 seconds to go.

Court papers do not seem to be specific as to what element might have been malfunctioning on his 115.5mm-long gadget. However, they do allege that Goodrich told an Apple store employee that he was “so mad, I could pop a 9mm at it.”

Oh, as well as something of a concealed weapons violation. You see, he had a concealed weapons permit, but omitted to mention to the arresting deputy that he actually had the gun on his person, according to WCPO9. A frustrating iPhone can sometimes affect one’s memory.

(Credit: CC Johan Larsson/Flickr)

Taking a gun to a gadget is like taking a blow-up doll to a dinner party. It doesn’t reflect well on you at all.

You will perhaps experience a sense of stunned discomfort when I tell you that Goodrich has, indeed, been charged with aggravated menacing and causing fear of harm to an Apple employee.

Some shout at Comcast cable boxes that refuse to delete recorded shows, leaving no room for new ones.

If your iPhone is causing you difficulties, don’t smoke it, stroke it. Or take it to an Apple store where a genius will offer counseling.

We all express frustration with our electronica in different ways.

According to WCPO9 (which is a Cincinnati TV station rather than C-3PO’s illicit lover), Donald Goodrich, 38, wafted into this very Apple store.
His cup appears not to have been overflowing with joy for his iPhone.

However, the allegation is not merely that Goodrich told the employee that he would, indeed, blast his iPhone. For he is accused of revealing that he happened to have the perfect little weapon behind the right side of his shirt. (Strangely, it was a black shirt.)

But few are those who threaten to blast their gadget and actually mean it.

I am not sure how many people are so intimidated by the Apple store’s graphic perfection and preternatural youthfulness that they actually take an extra 9mm with them.

This is not, to my knowledge, an iPhone that was already shot.

Which makes one wonder what thoughts might have been brewing at the Kenwood Towne Centre Apple store in Cincinnati on Thursday.

The NPD Group said Monday that its online survey found that 12 percent of households with a computer have at least one Mac, up from 9 percent a year ago. Nearly 85 percent of those with a Mac, though, also have at least one Windows-based PC.

Overall, Mac owners tend to have more computers and more electronic devices than non-Mac owners. Two-thirds of those with an Apple machine have three or more computers, compared with 29 percent of Windows-only houses.

That makes me feel a bit better about my own domicile, which is home to several Macs and PCs, not to mention more gadgets than I care to admit. There’s another reason, though, why Apple owners tend to have more digital gear than their non-Mac-possessing counterparts.

While the number of Apple-owning households continues to grow, the vast majority of those Macs are sharing space with at least one Windows-based PC, according to a new study.

Houses with Macs also tend to be home to twice as many gadgets, including more iPods and GPS systems than are present in non-Mac abodes.

“While Apple owners tend to own more computers and more electronics devices, there is also a high correlation among Apple owners and more affluent consumer households,” NPD analyst Stephen Baker said in a statement. “Thirty-six percent of Apple computer owners reported household incomes greater than $100,000, compared to 21 percent of all consumers. With a higher household income, though, it’s not a surprise that those consumers are making more electronics purchases.”

(Credit:
Apple)

NPD compiled its results from 2,300 responses to its online survey.

First, with every acquisition of a leading open-source company by anyone other than Red Hat, Red Hat becomes more and more isolated. Other companies are integrating open source into their business strategies. Red Hat’s differentiation as “the” open source company doesn’t have much of a shelf life left.

(Credit:
SpringSource)

I think Bearden was right. The company’s valuation has been soaring due to efficiently run operations (Bearden) and a big vision for the company’s prospects (Johnson and others). It was only a matter of time before it IPO’d or was acquired.

Red Hat doesn’t. Red Hat is exposed by this VMware and SpringSource combination. It needs to become more aggressive.

Happy as Fenton is with the SpringSource acquisition, I wonder if he feels the same as he did about Zimbra. So much money left on the table.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Working together with VMware we plan on creating a single, integrated, build-run-manage solution for the data center, private clouds, and public clouds. A solution that exploits knowledge of the application structure, and collaboration with middleware and management components, to ensure optimal efficiency and resiliency of the supporting virtual environment at deployment time and during runtime. A solution that will deliver a platform as a service (Paas) built around technologies that you already know, which can slash cost and complexity. A solution built around open, portable middleware technologies that can run on traditional Java EE application servers in a conventional data center and on Amazon EC2 and other elastic compute environments as well as on the VMware platform.

Here’s what it looks like:

The SpringSource + VMware vision

Second, SpringSource’s ubiquitous Spring Framework already threatened Red Hat’s booming JBoss business. But add VMware’s leading virtualization technology and suddenly Red Hat is under siege by a highly credible and disruptive competitor that could well outflank it.

I had hoped, however, that Red Hat would complement its JBoss business with SpringSource, but it’s not to be, and this doesn’t bode well for Red Hat, on two counts.

Indeed, I found out about the SpringSource acquisition back in July, apparently even before formal discussions started between the companies (due to a leaky source at VMware). SpringSource CEO Rob Bearden denied the existence of acquisition discussions between the two companies and Rod Johnson, the company’s founder and CEO, was on vacation at the time.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about SpringSource, largely because it has demonstrated a big vision (nothing less than the redefinition of the application server and an end-to-end application story), and so I wasn’t terribly surprised today to see VMware buy SpringSource for $420 million. On roughly $20 million in sales, much of that services, it’s a rich valuation, but one that is absolutely deserved given SpringSource’s potential.

But in denying the rumors, Bearden, COO at SpringSource, suggested that given “one more year…(SpringSource) will be bigger than MySQL,” acquired by Sun for $1 billion.

In fact, it’s almost certain that SpringSource sold too early, at least as measured the size of potential exits it could have had given a bit more time. Like Zimbra before it, SpringSource had unbounded potential to shake up the application server and development market.

Johnson describes the offering:

Red Hat is, of course, taking a leadership role in virtualization and increasingly cloud computing. But it will need to quickly move beyond its dependence on its operating system business to sell a larger, strategic story or it faces the prospect of being an excellent, limited basic infrastructure vendor.

I remember talking to Peter Fenton, partner with Benchmark Capital and an investor in both SpringSource and Zimbra. He indicated that the firm had made tremendous efforts to keep Zimbra from selling to Yahoo as it still had so much potential to build toward an even bigger valuation.

Astute observers will notice that the operating system, Red Hat’s core competence, becomes increasingly less relevant in this world. Vendors like Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and others have less to fear from this threat, because they’re already building high-value solutions above the operating system.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in enterprise IT, a market famously expensive to target due to the inflated cost of acquiring customers. Open source turns this cost equation on its head by making the acquisition of new customers relatively cheap, as SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin tells NetworkWorld.

Despite all the nifty, gee-whiz technology that the Web 2.0 craze brought the software industry, it’s still stodgy enterprise software that continues to command a significant price tag.

Today these are almost entirely those enterprises with savvy development teams, but it could prove to be an unhealthy trend for commercial open source. It’s one reason that Red Hat’s foray into cloud computing may prove a tough slog: the kinds of companies running clouds are precisely the sort that don’t need much vendor hand-holding. The Googles of the world don’t buy much software: they build it, and they use a lot of open source in the process.

Ultimately, it could be the studiously “un-cool” companies like IBM that make the most money from open source, principally because they are best positioned to monetize it with additional layers of proprietary hardware, software, and services. This breaks the open-source oath of absolute transparency, but it’s a price many CIOs seem willing to pay.

Still, open-source vendors like Red Hat will win often enough to ensure that open source remains big business, and big for business, for many years to come. The risk is that while open source has transformed enterprise IT, enterprise IT is in turn putting its stamp on open source, making it more attractive to adopt and far less compelling as a competitive differentiator.

Given its subscription model, open source forces vendors to innovate in order to earn renewals. And because open source comes with a built-in “recipe” (read: source code), it provides the “ultimate insurance policy,” as Glyn Moody writes, for enterprises that want to rely on a vendor but not become dependent upon it.

Now people understand software and they understand that many applications have matured. I think we’ll see over time the software industry reach a point where it is not proprietary vs. open source, but the shade of how much control you want, how much do you want to do yourself, and how much do you want the vendor to do.

That’s because however much we may enjoy Facebooking, Twittering, etc., ultimately we pay for what helps us get our jobs done.

Open source is becoming more like the market that gave it birth.

It’s not a race that open source always wins. Notice, for example, that in Linux’s easiest market–the market for Unix-to-Linux replacements–it’s proprietary Unix vendor IBM that arguably is cleaning up the most.

You can see this in the most recent IDC numbers on Linux deployments. While Red Hat, Novell, and other Linux vendors are growing comfortably, nonpaid Linux adoption is outpacing paid deployments. A sign that enterprise IT is going it alone?

It’s this lack of religious devotion to open source, with an emphasis on its tangible cost benefits over its freedom benefits, that continues to make open source palatable to the enterprise but also less distinctive. The reason that enterprises buy from Red Hat in droves has precious little to do with source code access and everything to do with the superior value (read: cost and performance) Red Hat offers, as Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst recently noted.

The one hitch to this enterprise open-source love-in is that the more open-source vendors enable enterprise IT, the less enterprise IT may need vendors.

Even so, just a few years ago, if you were a start-up focused on enterprise IT, VCs treated you like a leper, preferring to invest in something with a name like Bungabooboo.com over something that could shave 10 percent from a CIO’s operating costs. The one way to get funding for enterprise software was to approach the market in a decidedly Web 2.0 way: open source. With the recession still in full bloom, open-source companies like Red Hat are cleaning up.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

More importantly, as Augustin calls out, open source puts CIOs, not vendors, in control of their destiny:

Perhaps it has already happened.

In fact, open source has become such an essential ingredient to software success that Gartner’s Brian Prentice is now predicting that “we are rapidly moving to the point where all software companies will, to some extent, be an open source company.”

Top smartphones across the world

The global share for Nokia’s Symbian OS fell from 43 percent in February to 34 percent in August. However, Nokia smartphones remain hot sellers,louis vuitton handbags, accounting for 12 of the top 20 smartphones tracked by AdMob. Nokia’s N97 and 5800 XpressMusic units were the fourth and fifth most popular smartphones in the U.K. for August.

With the launch of the Pre, Palm’s WebOS has also taken off, grabbing a 4 percent slice of the smartphone market in August.

Phones running Google’s Android OS picked up a 7 percent market share by August versus only 2 percent in February, thanks to rapid gains in North America and Western Europe, said AdMob. Since its debut this summer, T-Mobile’s Android-powered MyTouch has been a top seller in both of those regions.

(Credit: AdMob)

On the downside, older smartphone systems have witnessed a drop in market share, according to AdMob.

(Credit: AdMob)

AdMob sells and tracks ads on mobile Web pages and applications to more than 7,000 publishers. The company compiled the data for this report based on its analysis of more than 10 billion monthly ad requests from over 160 different countries.

Apple’s iPhone and Android-based smartphones have both seen solid growth throughout the world this year, says a report released Wednesday by AdMob.

Finally, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile also lost share, falling from 7 percent in February to 4 percent in August, according to the report.

The iPhone’s worldwide market share jumped from 33 percent to 40 percent over February to August,prada bags, according to AdMob’s “August Mobile Metrics Report,” which tracked smartphone usage for that six-month period. AdMob, which serves ads for mobile Web sites and apps, bases its numbers on data from ad requests, impressions,chanel bags, and clicks.

Research In Motion’s slice of the market dropped slightly from 10 percent in February to 8 percent in August. Still, RIM’s Blackberry devices accounted for three of the top 20 smartphones around the world. The Palm OS, running on older units such as the Centro, declined in share from 3 percent in February to 1 percent in August.

Comcast, too, is starting to embrace online video, teaming up with media conglomerate Time Warner earlier this year to test a new service offered by Comcast called On Demand Online. The service allows Comcast cable customers to access some of Time Warner’s most popular TV shows from its TNT and TBS networks at no additional charge. Its plan is to provide TV networks and movie studios a secure way to distribute their movies and TV shows to a wider audience via the Internet.

Television networks are struggling to keep advertising revenues up, and movie studios are under pressure to prevent digital piracy from eating into their profits. Meanwhile, Comcast, which is facing more competition from phone companies and satellite providers in its TV business, is also trying to figure out how best to use the Internet to deliver video content.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Comcast is hoping to form a privately held joint venture that would include NBC’s media content. Comcast would control the venture with a 51 percent stake, and GE would own 49 percent of the new company.

The Wall Street Journal said that talks between Comcast and GE could still fall apart. Comcast is looking to pay as little as it can up-front. And there is an issue about what to do with Vivendi, which has a 20 percent stake in NBC Universal.

NBC and News Corp., the owner of Fox,prada bags, have made a splash with online service Hulu, which offers TV shows and some movies on demand. Other media conglomerates, including CNET News publisher CBS, have made similar moves.

This isn’t the first time Comcast has gone looking for a big media company. Five years ago, the company tried to acquire Walt Disney for about $66 billion. In the years since that failed attempt, the media and video distribution landscape has changed dramatically.

Individual TV channels have been putting their own TV content online for consumers to access for some time. This initially troubled cable operators such as Comcast; they saw the free delivery of video content for which they pay a hefty price as a threat to their business.

Combined,gucci bags, the new jointly owned media company would own more than two dozen TV networks, including NBC,chanel bags, along with several cable stations, such as USA Network. Comcast already operates some of its own cable networks, such as E!, the Style Network, and G4. The new joint venture would also own NBC Universal studios, plus 10 local NBC TV affiliates in cities such as New York and San Diego.

Cable giant Comcast is reportedly in talks to gain a controlling stake in General Electric’s NBC Universal, in a deal that would help shape Comcast’s online-content strategy and help NBC Universal keep pace amid the shifting market.