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On Monday, Salesforce.com said it has launched the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs, which will let developers using its Force.com development platform connect to data in Google Apps.

Force.com is Salesforce.com’s cloud computing service for building hosted Web applications.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Google chief Eric Schmidt.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET Networks)

The two companies inked an initial deal in April to link Salesforce’s CRM (customer relationship management) applications with integrated Google Apps.

Salesforce.com said the tool will be posted for free download at its Force.com Web site.

Salesforce.com is furthering its alliance with Google through a new toolkit that lets developers tap into Google’s services.

The companies envision that the toolkit will pave the way for new applications, such as business forecasting and quote generation systems, that combine customer data within Salesforce.com with spreadsheet and other functions within Google Apps.

As but one more piece of testamentary evidence that the old guard at Microsoft needs to be shown the door, Bill Gates has demonstrated conclusively that he has exactly zero understanding of open source, or at least zero desire to have an intelligent discussion about it. Speaking to a pharmaceutical industry group, Bill Gates took time out to utter irrelevancies and inaccuracies about the GNU General Public License:

Ahem. It’s the exact opposite, Mr. Gates. 100% the exact opposite.

What open source does is ensure that customers share equally in the economic benefits of software, rather than having profits hoarded by one company (i.e., Microsoft’s model). The GPL does this perhaps best of all. In another age, Mr. Gates would have found the GPL to be a dear friend to his better capitalist instincts. It’s actually a close cousin to a proprietary license in some ways, except that it protects through openness, not closed source.

Open source insists upon leaving software open to further improvement. And if you were to read the European Union’s report on open source, you’d see that it’s actually a massive opportunity for improved GDP growth.

Clearly, one cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Time to let Mr. Gates get to his charity work. I suspect that he’ll discover at some point that open source actually will afford his charitable work far more reach and value than going about it in his old, proprietary ways.

There’s free software and then there’s open source,” he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries [largely in response to open source, I might add]. With open source software, on the other hand, “there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with.” Open source, he said, creates a license “so that nobody can ever improve the software,” he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business.

Just give him a few decades to unlearn all of his bad habits.

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The same could be said of the 8GB USB memory stick, although the Eee-PC-branded version does include a white leather strap, if that’s your kind of thing.

We’ll give the final word to one of our Asus contacts, who wearily told us recently that he was going to get “Eee PC” tattooed on his forehead, because that’s all anyone wants to talk to him about lately.

A-Data says, “One of the limitations of Asus’s Eee PC is the limited storage,” and while the 8GB SD card is already double the capacity of the Eee PC’s standard built-in 4GB SSD hard drive (other options are available), you could really use any brand of card in the system’s SD card slot.

A-Data, a Taiwanese company that calls itself “The Global Leading Brand of Memory Products,” is introducing two Eee-PC-branded accessories, a USB flash drive and an SD memory card.

(Credit:
A-Data)

No word on U.S. pricing or availability yet–but everyone we know treats USB keys and SD cards as commodity products, so we don’t expect a big market for up-sell versions. Although the Eee PC has become such a cult hit, so we can’t rule it out.

(Credit:
A-Data)

We like the Asus Eee PC as much as anyone else, but does this $499 mini-notebook really need its own line of third-party branded accessories?

As concerns over a weakening U.S. economy grow, some economists anticipate consumers here will be spending less. But PC makers already know that the U.S. is not the place to expect giant profits–much of the growth in the PC business these days is coming in emerging markets, where many consumers are making their first computer purchase.

Dell is the second-biggest PC maker worldwide, but in China lags behind Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, and Asus. Dell raised its profile in the country last fall when it agreed to sell its computers through local retail giant Gome. On Thursday the company said it will be expanding to 1,200 cities in China by the end of 2008, a giant leap from the 45 cities in 2007.

The Texas PC maker said Thursday it plans to increase its presence in China and India, the Associated Press reports.

As the U.S. market becomes increasingly saturated with computers, Dell is looking eastward for new markets in which to sell its wares.

“When we look at the potential for expansion, we do see enormous opportunity ahead,” Michael Dell said. “As far as the U.S. goes, I think the U.S. will be OK, but not the fastest-growing. We expect more growth in Asia.”

“This year, we plan to introduce 50 percent more notebook platforms than we introduced last year, including exciting new products aimed exactly at Chinese customer needs,” CEO Michael Dell said at a news conference in Beijing. He added that machines meant for needs of Indian customers would also be part of the plan.

And although the company is operated by Time Warner, which has done all it can to make the merger worthwhile, the online firm is somewhat independent from its owners (Google also owns a small stake) and offers a wide array of services that have been neglected by Microsoft.

Reason 3: AOL will come cheap

Let’s face it — even though the company has the kind of cash to acquire Bebo for $850 million, AOL is in rough shape. It’s in a transitional phase that it’s having a hard time breaking out of and it has made a number of poor decisions that have hindered its growth.

Sound crazy? If so, consider the fact that AOL has quickly become one of the largest competitors to Microsoft in its attempt to acquire Yahoo and at the same time, it’s barely standing on the backs of sound editorial content from Weblogs, Inc. and now, social networking — two areas Microsoft currently has no influence in.

Reason 1: Complementary services

And considering the fact that Microsoft would probably be willing to pay about half as much for AOL (about $22 billion), Yahoo would certainly worry that its time is up and it lost its chance to court a serious buyer.

All the while, Ballmer and company could scheme to find ways to continue its proxy fight and install a board that’s far more likely to accept a sweetheart deal from Microsoft. In the process, Microsoft could walk away with both companies. Just don’t expect it to happen overnight. In fact, I would guess that an AOL deal would put Yahoo on the back burner for about a year.

Now, I’m sure some would try to make the argument that Microsoft only wants Yahoo for search, but I’m not so quick to agree. If that’s true, is all of Yahoo’s “extras” just a bonus of acquiring the company? Microsoft has made a number of statements in the past saying that it wants to do more on the Internet and offer more compelling services and acquiring AOL is the first step in doing just that.

As it stands, AOL now owns Weblogs, Inc.; TMZ.com; Bebo; Quigo, an advertising firm; Third Screen Media, a mobile advertising firm; and a slew of other advertising companies that could have a major impact on the business going forward.

At face value, a deal between AOL and Microsoft may not look like the match made in Heaven some are calling the possible Yahoo deal. But when you take a slightly more comprehensive view of what’s really going on, your opinion might change.

For the first time, Microsoft could be a major player in the social networking space with Bebo and have sound editorial content turning a profit. Aside from that, AIM, which is the most popular IM’ing tool in the US, will be a great tool for Microsoft, considering MSN holds that title pretty much everywhere else in the world.

After today’s announcement that AOL has acquired Bebo for $850 million in the hopes that it will be able to capitalize on the upswing in social networking, I had a thought. Knowing that AOL is trying to get a deal done with Yahoo and the company owns some solid properties, why doesn’t Microsoft forget about Yahoo for a while and acquire AOL?

A Microsoft acquisition of AOL would throw Yahoo off its mark and send panic through the entire company. In just one day, Yahoo’s stock price would sink to an unprecedented low and Jerry Yang would be forced to come out for damage control.

Reason 2: It makes Yahoo worry

The Microsoft-AOL deal would probably look quite similar to its pledge for Yahoo and an offer would be made where half of it is payable in cash and the other half would be offered up in Microsoft stock. And considering the fact that AOL is probably about half as valuable to Microsoft as Yahoo, there’s no reason to suggest it wouldn’t offer about half as much. Of course, that number would probably rise into the $30 billion to $35 billion after negotiations were complete. That said, that figure isn’t too bad of a deal for Microsoft and one that would conceivably bear fruit almost immediately given the fact all of AOL’s properties (aside from its advertising ventures) are running on all cylinders.

There’s no debating the fact that Google will never acquire Yahoo and I’m of the opinion that Microsoft never will either. That said, Yahoo wants to be acquired by a company and although it has said numerous times that it actually feels quite opposite, I think it’s full of hot air.

In essence, the deal for AOL would be a good one for Microsoft and could actually help it in its negotiations for Yahoo. Here’s why:

At this point, AOL looks far more attractive to Microsoft than some may believe. And although the chances of it acquiring the online firm are low, it wouldn’t be a bad idea and one that’s certainly worth considering.

That said, it’s still an attractive company from Microsoft’s standpoint and all of its properties account for a boatload of pageviews each day, which could easily translate to an advertising revenue stream that is not only controlled by Microsoft and thus blocked from Google, but highly lucrative.

Paul says Nvidia has implemented power savings techniques on its GTX 280 that keep the power down when it’s not running at top performance loads. “With the GTX 280 at idle, that card runs at about 25 watts, which is one-tenth of its absolute worst-case power,” he said. Nvidia also offers hybrid graphics technology that turns off all the power-sucking boards when they’re not in use.

“A regular home user would have to have an electrician come in, get the outlet out, and plug in a higher breaker.” –George Yang, IBuyPower engineer

And the trend in power supplies exemplifies how this market has changed. “The power supply used to be just silver box, and nobody gave it a second thought,” he said. “(But) as graphics cards have evolved, they have forced the power supply makers to keep providing more and more power pipes–or cabling–to the graphics cards”–increasing the unit’s complexity, he said.

A 1,250-watt power supply–this one from Cooler Master–is the largest a game PC maker will install today.

Green PC designs have become more than just practical; they’re cool. Power-sipping Netbooks are in, as are small desktops like the Dell Studio Hybrid and Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Slimline.

Neither Nvidia nor ATI show any signs of slowing down, according to Reeves. “Eventually these chips get so hot that their own heat becomes a barrier to performance,” he said.

This is not the case for high-end gaming PCs, where bigger is better. How far this trend can go isn’t clear, but a seminal event in Apple’s history may offer a lesson. In 2001, Apple unveiled one of the first dual-processor consumer systems, based on the overheating-prone IBM PowerPC G4 processor. The original Apple tower design had a Rube Goldberg feel to it, with a host of fans straining to rid the system of heat. A noise like that emitted by a wind tunnel, generated by the power supply and fans, forced Apple to redesign the system.

Nvidia admits that its chips are drawing more power than before. “If we go back about three years, our graphics card power was in the 120- to 130-watt range,” said Jason Paul, product manager in charge of enthusiast GPUs (graphics processing units) at Nvidia. “The GTX 280 which we launched a couple of months back, it’s around 230 watts (of) graphics card power,” he said.

Other game rig makers are equally concerned. “I swore that I’d never break 1,000 (watts),” said Kelt Reeves, president of game PC maker Falcon Northwest. “Unfortunately, that’s been the solution for the past several years. Bigger, bigger, bigger power supplies.”

This symbolized why Apple eventually abandoned PowerPC: The platform wasn’t efficient with power.

But game box makers ship many–if not most–of their systems to the very niche that Paul is describing. “We’re all about the high end. The higher-end the graphics card is, and the more expensive, the more we sell,” said Reeves.

Dell XPS 730 game box uses special liquid cooling to control heat.

But Paul claims the performance per watt is the key yardstick, not raw power. “Where you see a little under 2X increase in maximum power, you’ve seen probably 3-times or 4-times (the) increase in the level of performance. So, overall we see a substantial improvement in performance per watt. This is the big metric we track to ensure we’re delivering efficient architectures. ”

It’s an ominous trend, according to box makers. “If this trend does continue, then, yes, it will give us problems,” said George Yang, an engineer at Los Angeles-based game rig maker IBuyPower. “A regular home user would have to have an electrician come in, get the outlet out, and plug in a higher breaker,” Yang said. Today, some of the higher-end systems with big power supplies require a special wall power socket, according to Yang.

Reeves cites GPUs, not CPUs from Intel, as the culprit. “The latest CPUs use very little wattage. If you overclock a 3GHz Intel CPU to 4GHz, you might pull 40 more watts. Whereas a graphics card, you put three of them in a system, they’ll pull 800 watts running some of the higher-end games,” he said.

This is just about the limit, he said. “We can’t go too much more over that before–if you actually pull that (power)–you start tripping the client’s household circuit breaker.”

Moreover, Paul says that the multiboard systems are limited to a small niche at the very top of the market. “There’s definitely a segment of the market that wants more and more performance. Remember, however, that this is the ultimate performance (segment).”

(Credit:
Cooler Master)

The eye-opening graphics possible on today’s game PCs come at a cost: light-dimming power consumption. The trend, rooted in the perennial quest for more speed, bucks the overall greening of the PC industry.

(Credit:
Dell Computer)

Reeves says that 1,200 watts is now essential for gaming systems based on multiple boards from Nvidia or AMD’s ATI graphics unit. “With three GTX 280s or two of the R700 cards, we’re recommending they go with a 1,200-watt power supply,” Reeves said, referring to the newest graphics chips from Nvidia and ATI respectively.

Fast-forward to 2008. Game rig makers are cramming as many as four graphics chips into high-end boxes that are notable not only for performance but also for the power they consume. As a consequence, big power supply units are in vogue. Today, bragging rights extend to the units themselves: some systems boasting boutique brand names such as Cooler Master and SilverStone draw 1,200 watts–roughly three times the power requirements of game systems a few years ago.

There is an ungreen revolution taking place in enthusiast game PC circles.

The show will also be fueled by product placement, with handset manufacturer Sony Ericsson signing on as the inaugural brand sponsor. Apparently this will lead to the protagonist “winding his boss up with mobile phone-related pranks.”

They weren’t the only ones who got that memo. Record label Universal Music Group’s Universal Music U.K. announced Monday that it’s partnered with social network Bebo to broadcast a series called The Secret World of Sam King: one part video blog, one part Choose Your Own Adventure, and one part Universal advertorial. It’s being produced by Globe Productions, a division of Universal.

At the many advertising conferences dotting Internet Week New York this week, speakers and panelists have been exhorting the ad industry to start thinking more creatively when it comes to tackling digital media–even creating elaborate branded series in lieu of traditional commercials.

Universal’s concept of a “brand show” is a bit similar to Back On Topps, a series created by former Disney exec Michael Eisner’s video start-up Vuguru, as a promotion for the trading card company (which Eisner himself owns). That series, premiering this week, also pits fictional company employees against the celebrities affiliated with it–in Topps’ case, famous athletes.

The premise of the new series is that Sam King, an extremely low-level fictional employee of Universal Music, decides to found his own record label in the company mail room. Along the way, he encounters real-life Universal artists, and viewers will be able to submit opinions, send in material, and suggest which bands Sam should scout.

Bebo and Universal have not provided a concrete debut date.

For Bebo, which has its biggest audience in the U.K., and parent company AOL, its 42 million members get video content that will (ideally) be enjoyable and will keep them around. It’ll also be cross-promoted across other AOL video brands. For Universal, creating an (ideally) hip show geared toward Bebo’s young users could help recapture the attention of a generation that’s turned away from the major labels and in the direction of BitTorrent.

“The challenge for studios is really about convincing consumers to upgrade their libraries, (and) upconverting to 1080p (the highest resolution currently available) doesn’t necessitate buying a whole new format,” said Josh Martin, HD and video analyst for The Yankee Group.

Netflix, a purveyor of rental discs, obviously saw the writing on the wall, instituting its Watch It Now feature last year. Amazon.com, which sells plenty of packaged media, has its own Unbox video download service.

TiVo and other DVR makers that support cable giants like Comcast have traditional VOD options, and hard drive space will continue to expand. Netflix has its rentals available to watch right from its Web site, and watching TV shows online and for free at sites like ComedyCentral.com, Hulu.com, Joost, means you don’t have to buy whole seasons of TV shows on physical discs anymore. If watching TV on a PC isn’t your thing, technologies like Sony’s Bravia Internet Link and Sling Media’s SlingProjector bring Web video directly to the TV.

People will get tired of replacing their favorite films to the trendy format of the moment. The price of the software ranging from $20 to $30 for Blu-ray discs right now will eventually drop. But digital copies costing less than $5 a pop, it’s an easy decision for many.

Blu-ray won’t enjoy the same decade-long dominance DVD did after it succeeded VHS. But that’s not because there will be other challenger physical disc formats. Rather, instead of buying discs from Amazon, Best Buy or Wal-Mart, people will begin getting their entertainment in the form of digital downloads in larger volumes.

“It requires 193 kilobytes per second to watch live, which is easily doable on Fios barring network congestion,” McCullagh points out. (Levels of compression or a change from the H.264 video codec will have different results, of course.)

So Fios is about halfway there about at best, and Comcast’s 100 megabit per second connection, which it promised at CES would be a reality by 2009, could pull it off.

The studios backing Blu-ray already know this. At an HDTV confab last fall, Warner Bros.’ vice president of high-definition media development likened HD packaged media to a set of training wheels for digital downloads.

To the chagrin of disc patent holders, discs are not the only way to consumer high-definition media now. There are so many other ways to get content: Set-top boxes are getting far more sophisticated and will continue to do so in the next few years. Vudu, for instance, stepped up the video on demand option by adding more content than any of its predecessors, including the option for HD purchases and rentals. Apple recently upgraded Apple TV to include rentals–standard definition and HD–and a way to bypass the need for a PC to watch films on a living room TV. Even Microsoft’s
Xbox 360 game console has a download service for movies.

The biggest roadblock is of course bandwidth, which causes the process to be long, painful, and ultimately not worth it for many. But that will change. Consider, for example, this scenario:

The likely reason? Overall consumer spending on DVDs and high-definition discs (HD DVD and Blu-ray), both purchase and rental, has been steadily decreasing since its peak at $24.5 billion in 2004. According to the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade group that represents all disc makers, spending last year amounted to $23.7 billion.

“We can use HD discs to train consumers to move into digital, but it’s a transition,” said Warner Bros.’ Dan Silverberg. “Downloaded content will come, but the consumer will get quicker tutorial into video-on-demand, etc., by owning a Blu-ray player or HD DVD.”

It’ll happen sooner than they think. With a growing number of alternatives to packaged media, combined with the relatively high prices of Blu-ray players and discs vs. inexpensive, so-called upconverting DVD players, Blu-ray will likely be the last major disc format you’ll ever buy.

With the fall of HD DVD, Blu-ray has assumed the throne as the next format of choice, but its reign will be short-lived.

A 44-minute 640×360 (not high-definition) episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles that my colleague Declan McCullagh downloaded via iTunes is 510MB.

Perhaps most importantly, consumers will continue to get more and more comfortable with the idea of their library being digital. We’re already there with music, and it’s a relatively easy transition to make to one’s movie collection. But it’s also true of other things like Fandango’s digital movie tickets, or even airline tickets and gift cards. We live in a world where oftentimes the value is not in the object itself, but in the digital information stored on a computer somewhere. (It’s an attitude that’s anathema to the likes of Disney and its studio cohorts who have always pushed the concept of personal movie collections, hence the push to upgrade to the “special edition” of older films.)

Using Fios from Verizon, it’s possible to currently download several episodes of a TV show at approximately 5 megabits per second, or 625 kilobytes per second.

Comcast customers–and there are far more of them than Fios customers–have speeds today that vary widely, but 187 kilobytes per second in real-world tests is a good estimate. Assuming a one-hour high-definition TV show (with commercials) is around 5GB, that requires 1,388,888 kilobytes per second or 1.38 megabytes per second to watch.

“Google has been seeing relatively higher growth from big advertisers. This means that Yahoo, which tends to have far deeper relationships with big advertisers, should see continuation of growth reacceleration in its…display ad,” Aggarwal said in his report. “We think that the display ad can offset a likely modest weakness in search.”

And for Yahoo, such performance could assist it in capturing a higher buyout bid from Microsoft, which has been loath to up the ante without engaging in formal merger talks.

Aggarwal also noted he has received more clarity on the Yahoo-Google advertising test, which is viewed by Microsoft-Yahoo merger watchers as another lever by which Yahoo may elicit a higher bid from Microsoft.

“We think that a big beat March quarter by Google should increase pressure for Microsoft to acquire Yahoo sooner. From Microsoft’s perspective, Google has been growing very fast and no other company has been able to challenge Google to become a compelling No. 2 player in online advertising,” Sandeep Aggarwal, a Collins Stewart senior Internet Research analyst, said in a research note.

Yahoo is set to report its first-quarter results on Tuesday, with Wall Street soothsayers predicting the company may ride the coattails of Google’s phenomenal quarter.

And while analysts expect Yahoo to report revenue of $1.32 billion, excluding the cost to acquire traffic, Yahoo’s management in January said it anticipated generating revenue of $1.28 billion to $1.38 billion, excluding traffic acquisition costs.

A consensus of analysts’ estimates foresees Yahoo reporting earnings of 9 cents a share on revenue of $1.32 billion for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters. The range among analysts, however, varies as low as 7 cents a share to as high as 14 cents.

Search is expected to show some weakness in the U.S. market, which accounts for two-thirds of Yahoo’s paid search business. That said, however, Aggarwal still expects that Google advertisers who faced a low ranking with Google’s quality scoring may have defected to Yahoo in the first quarter.

Not only would a strong Yahoo quarter potentially assist in attracting a higher bid from Microsoft, it would also show that Yahoo can execute, despite enormous distractions to its workforce. Microsoft launched its unsolicited bid on Feb. 1, one month after Yahoo began its first quarter. (For full coverage, see “Microsoft’s big bid for Yahoo.”)

“Yahoo’s testing of Google is an AdSense relationship very similar to any third party Web publishers using Google to monetize its Website,” Aggarwal noted in his research note. “This means the backend integration, use of Google’s algorithm, or retiring of IT infrastructure by Yahoo does not come into play.”

Unlimited plans have been all the rage among the carriers lately, as they try and one-up each other with new pricing. With the growing popularity of smartphones, it also makes sense that pricing competition would start to become more common among the data services as well.

The Motorola Q9m is one of the three phones eligible for a new Verizon data plan.

If you’ve got a Motorola Q9m, a Verizon Wireless SMT5800 (HTC) or a Verizon Wireless XV6800 (UTStarcom), you can now add a $29.99-a-month e-mail and Web browsing plan to your “qualifying” voice plan. Exactly what the qualifications are was left unsaid in Verizon’s press release.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Verizon said it would include more phones in the new plan over the next few months. There’s already such a plan in place for BlackBerry users.

Verizon trotted out a low-cost all-you-can-eat data plan for its subcribers Monday, although it’s only available on a few phones.