Yahoo's Bartz on Microsoft, engineering, and ads

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz kibitzed with a luncheon of Wall Street analysts Wednesday as part of a free-wheeling discussion of Yahoo's past sins and future opportunities.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz

(Credit: Yahoo)

At the Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. Technology Conference, analyst Justin Post noted the "much more open policy" that Yahoo has implemented with regards to the financial world since Bartz's arrival at Yahoo, and that openness definitely applies to Bartz's willingness to candidly discuss Yahoo's situation regarding Google, Microsoft.

Bartz let fly with a few of her trademark zingers, but otherwise had little new to say about Yahoo that hadn't already been covered at events like last week's D: All Things Digital conference or Yahoo earnings calls. Nonetheless, here's a selection of Bartzisms that shed a little more light on Yahoo's efforts during her first six months on the job:

• "Yahoo is swimming in tchotchkes. If I see another t-shirt I'm going to throw up." Bartz came to Yahoo with a reputation as a slash-and-burn cost cutter from her days at Autodesk. She is indeed trying to tighten spending on what she called "discretionary" items such as yet another purple t-shirt, but said that Yahoo will continue to spend quite a bit of money on IT needed to keep its sites up and running.

• "Yahoo has way too much infrastructure. For everything you can do in 3 steps, Yahoo does it in 22." Along those lines, a lot of the cutting Bartz has tried to implement has more to do with processes and sites that had basically been "abandoned," she said. Some Yahoo properties that were launched during the previous regime stagnated, and therefore gave off a poor impression of Yahoo to a visitor that stumbled upon them. Cleaning up Yahoo's myriad properties--in a much faster way than currently possible--seems like a priority for Bartz.

• "We're not a search company." Bartz has previously said that search is an important part of Yahoo, but seems to think that the hoopla over Yahoo's search position between Google and Microsoft distracts from what Yahoo is all about. Ninety-eight percent of Yahoo's searches come from people who are already on the site, she said. That means Yahoo has to keep finding ways to bring in users to its content sites--such as sports, finance, and local news--and let searches conducted by those additional users drive its ad business rather than fighting the external search branding issue against Google, as Microsoft is trying to do with its new Bing search engine.

A revamped home page coming "later this fall" will help, Bartz said. One feature of that home page will involve getting Twitter messages right onto the page; "everything is flowing in, and we help you flow out."

• "An extroverted engineer looks at your shoes when they are talking to you." Bartz got her biggest laugh of the day with an old joke about engineers, and how she prefers spending time out making sales calls with Yahoo's sales force. This is a key area of differentiation for Yahoo: it says it wants to focus on "high-touch" sales, rather than the algorithmic model that prints money for Google.

The hope is that Yahoo can translate its strength in display advertising to lure revenue from chief marketing officers at big companies thinking about moving a chunk of their advertising spending from television to the Web. For those folks, "your brand is not defined by 20 keywords. You have to put a persona out there," she said, referring to the need for display and/or video advertising. In order to do win that business, however, Yahoo has to take a lot of "friction" out of the Internet ad sales process that just isn't there in the television business.

• "This is like me trying to buy Office from Steve. This is not a minor issue." Bartz handled the inevitable questions about Yahoo's on-again, off-again romance with Microsoft by recognizing that while there are some compelling opportunities if Yahoo and Microsoft were to enter into a search partnership, there are more than a few issues, as well.

"Do we trust them to do the technology right? Would we save money?" she wondered. Bartz thought offloading Yahoo's search business would save about $500 million--far less than analysts had estimated--including data-center and employee costs, but there would be lost revenue to factor in, of course.

Microsoft's motivation, however, is clear, at least as Bartz sees it. "They have Google envy, and they really have to stop that money machine because that money machine is coming back on desktop apps."

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Al Gore wants to save advertising, too

NEW YORK--According to former vice president Al Gore, the importance of sustainability doesn't just apply to the environment. It also is key to the future of advertising.

"It really comes out of the environment, but in my opinion the key theme of this century really is sustainability," Gore said. "This theme of environmental sustainability has become a part of our culture, it's a part of our discourse, and I'm very optimistic that it will soon be a part of our policy."

Addressing the crowd of advertisers and online-media types at the Digital Content NewFront event put on by Digitas on Wedneday, Gore was speaking not as a "recovering politician" or a green-tech evangelist, but as the co-founder of Current Media, the experimental cable news channel that relies heavily on user-created content for both editorial and advertisements.

It's about time for our old views of advertising to die, he said.

"In the 20th century, the advertising model was based on the same principles that the Industrial Revolution was based on: scale," Gore said. "It was big, it was blunt, very expensive, and very intrusive, and audiences have now begun to resist that old advertising model even as the environment in which it is presented changes a great deal. The new model is very different because the media landscape is completely different."

More than half of the advertisements on Current are called "VCAMs," or "viewer-created advertising messages," Gore said. These are videos selected out of user submissions for brands interested in advertising on Current; the winner is paid by the advertiser, though it costs significantly less than the production budget of a traditional TV ad, and the winner receives an additional payment if the advertiser wants to use it outside of Current.

It's a model not unlike the wildly successful T-shirt company Threadless, which gets thousands of design submissions and gives a cash prize to the ones that it subsequently prints and sells.

Gore showed off a series of VCAMs proudly, as though they were home videos of his kids: One of them, created by two 24-year-olds, was a Mountain Dew ad about aspiring to be a professional hide-and-seek player. Another, created by a 29-year-old, was a T-Mobile ad showing people excitedly attempting to get picked for a "fave five" as though it were a dodgeball team. Gore mentioned another that was created by a 17-year-old who subsequently received a $50,000 check when the advertiser wanted to use it outside of Current.

There are problems, obviously, which some of the audience members brought up in questions. There are plenty of brands that wouldn't get aspiring filmmakers quite as jazzed as the car and gadget companies whose ads Gore showed off. And while the Flip-camera-toting young adults responsible for Current's VCAMs have the pluck and the free time to run around making commercials, it's easy to theorize that it would be tougher for a network with an older audience to pull it off.

Then there's the fact that while Current has been way ahead of the curve on some digital trends--displaying live Twitter messages onscreen, for example--it's still not a huge media powerhouse. The company canceled itsscheduled initial public offering earlier this year, citing the bleak economic climate.

Gore, however, had an example of successful "sustainable advertising" beyond Current. What we can look at, he said, is his old job: politics.

"The most powerful new brand that we've all seen unveiled over the last two years is (Barack Obama)," Gore said, showing a slide of the "O" sunrise logo that became so well known during Obama's successful presidential campaign. "And what is it about this brand that made it so incredibly successful? It was all about empowerment, it was all about involving people to help deliver the message. It was very tuned into the new technologies and how people use them."

Just as the Obama campaign made efficient use of inexpensive marketing and publicity tools on the Web, Gore believes that the digital age has made it possible for high-quality ads to be ubiquitous, rather than just at the one time of the year when people get really pumped about what commercials will be on TV.

"During the Super Bowl, people leave during the game rather than the ads. They want to see the ads because they know something extra has gone into super bowl ads," Gore said. "(But) it's not sustainable to have that kind of ad budget and that kind of focused creativity that you find on those ads completely ubiquitous throughout the television year."

At the end of his talk, the former vice president was left speechless when one audience member asked him if he believed that the problem of carbon emissions could be solved by 2029 through the use of technology coming from UFOs.

"No," he said after a long pause. "I do not."

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Coda unveils 'practical' all-electric sedan

You could call electric car company Coda Automotive the anti-Tesla.

The company, formed by fleet vehicle provider Miles Electric, on Wednesday unveiled the Coda, a plain-looking electric car that's designed for everyday use.

The highway-capable four-door sedan can go between 90 and 120 miles on its lithium-ion battery pack. It will be available to consumers in California in the fall of 2010 at a price of $45,000. The cost can be offset by about $10,000 from a federal tax credit and state incentives, the company said.

The Coda: Not neccessarily a head turner, but meant to be practical.

(Credit: Coda Automotive)

Coda is marketing is the car as a way to kick the oil habit without having to buy a racy Tesla Roadster for $100,000. "It's a practical revolution for real drivers who need reliable transportation," said Coda Automotive CEO Kevin Czinger in a statement.

The company also announced that it has created a joint venture with Chinese cell manufacturer Tianjin Lishen Battery to make batteries for cars and utility power storage. That long-term agreement will allow Coda to have sufficient battery supply, Czinger said.

State-owned Chinese company Hafei is Coda Automotive's car manufacturing partner. Coda Automotive designs and markets the cars.

The Coda's batteries, able to store 33.8 kilowatt-hours, can be charged from a standard 110-volt U.S. electric outlet. Charge time with a 220-volt outlet is less than six hours.

The cost of owning the electric car will be lower because there are fewer moving parts and it doesn't require oil changes. It will cost about three cents a mile to run a Code, while a gasoline car that gets 20 miles per gallon costs more like 17 cents a mile, according to the company.

The top speed for the Coda is 80 miles per hour and it will accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in under 11 seconds.

Although the Coda isn't necessarily flashy, it will have the amenities that many new cars have including Bluetooth connectivity, a navigation system, iPod dock, and satellite radio. It should be available for test drives by the end of this year.

The company expects the Coda to meet the highest safety ratings with four or five-Star NCAP crash rating. It will be warrantied for three years and the battery is guaranteed for eight years or 100,000 miles.

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Ellison: Java-based Netbooks on Sun's horizon

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison wants to see Java on a lot more devices, particularly mobile phones and Netbooks. Whether or not the combined Oracle/Sun builds such devices, Ellison expects to pour more money and research into Java's development.

The tech community has been wondering what will happen to Java now that its new parent will be Oracle, courtesy of the database giant's impending $7.4 billion buyout of Sun Microsystems, which is expected to close this summer.

Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy at JavaOne

(Credit: JavaOne)

At Tuesday's JavaOne conference in San Francisco, Ellison made a surprise appearance on stage, where he spoke with Sun Chairman Scott McNealy about Java's future.

"I think you'll see us get very aggressive in developing Java apps for things like telephones and Netbooks," said Ellison. He added that he's been reading a lot about mobile devices, including those running Google's Android operating system, that make use of Java. He's looking for greater development of mobile applications using Sun's JavaFX Mobile platform, which is optimized to run on cell phones and Netbooks.

Ellison highlighted Java-based cell phones and netbooks running Android as key areas to target and hinted that Oracle/Sun may want to enter that arena directly. "I can see lots and lots of Java devices, some coming from our friends at Google," said Ellison. "But I don't see why some of those devices shouldn't come from Sun/Oracle."

Hardware makers that have already unveiled or announced phones and Netbooks based on Android includeAcer, HTC, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.

Ellison threw his full support behind Java, reminding the crowd at JavaOne that Oracle's middleware makes good use of Java. He called it an "attractive platform" because of its openness and the ability to extend it. "Everything that sits on top of our database--all our products--are Java-based," he said. He added that Oracle's whole next generation of business applications is built entirely on Java.

When asked by McNealy about the future of Java in general, Ellison said, "Sun has done a fantastic job inventing Java, expanding Java, opening up Java, giving Java to the world, and we're going to do more of the same." He noted that Oracle has invested heavily in Java in the past and believes that investment will continue and even accelerate. "We see increased investment in Java coming from the Sun/Oracle combination," he said.

The full exchange between Ellison and McNealy is available below.

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Windows 7 catching developers' eyes

While we've heard a lot about Windows 7, we haven't heard too much about the software and hardware that will take advantage of the new operating system.

That's starting to change.

This week, touch screen maker N-trig is showing off a variety of third-party software programs that take advantage of the multitouch features of Windows 7. Meanwhile, Microsoft's hardware unit said it is also building support for Windows 7's new taskbar and thumbnail previews into its line of keyboards and mice.

Microsoft said beta versions of the drivers for its products are available now, with final versions set for release at the end of next month.

On the software front, N-trig is showing off a number of multitouch Windows 7 applications at a display conference in San Antonio this week. Microsoft has also announced its own package of free touch programs for Windows 7, including three casual games and three programs ported over from Microsoft's Surface tabletop computer.

"There's lots of stuff going on," N-trig Vice President Lenny Engelhardt said in a telephone interview. Among the applications N-trig is showing is a photo browser from FingerTapps and a multitouch 3-D design program from SpaceClaim. Corel also said it will have multi-touch enabled programs later this year, but didn't give specifics.

"Windows 7 and Windows Touch are giving Corel's software designers an incredible opportunity to enhance how consumers experience creative software," executive vice president Joe Roberts said in a statement.

Getting compelling software is key to transforming multitouch from a curiosity into something that consumers are willing to pay for. Adding a touch screen adds on the order of $100 or more to the cost of a system, depending on screen size.

"In this current economic climate, to get people to buy new hardware is going to take some real nice, compelling applications," Engelhardt said.

HP and Dell have started shipping multitouch machines ahead of Windows 7, but Engelhardt said he expects all the major hardware and software makers to support touch at some level once the new operating system hits the market in October.

"None of these guys wants to be left out," Engelhardt said.

Although touch will remain a small part of the total PC market, Engelhardt said he sees it expanding from where it is today, with a few desktop models as well as a handful of convertible tablet laptops.

"A lot of those notebooks are going to be larger than what you have seen," he said. "There will be computers with 14 and 17 inch screens."

Multi-touch will also reach the Netbook sector, though that market is harder to predict, he said.

Engelhardt said that multitouch has the opportunity to do the same thing for Windows PCs that the iPhone did for mobile phones--take a task that everyone was already doing and make it fun.

A video from N-trig shows some other possibilities for where touch can go in Windows 7. In the video (embedded below), N-trig shows a number of gaming scenarios, including the ability to play Guitar Hero using several fingers touching the screen. Although the makers of Guitar Hero haven't announced such plans, Engelhardt said that the option is entirely technically feasible, with his engineering team having created a working demo.

Engelhardt said that, thus far, the consumer area appears to be ahead of the enterprise software market, but said that, over time, he expects more touch-enabled business applications as well.

For its part, Microsoft said it is happy with the level of touch support it is seeing from developers.

"We are pleased to see how quickly our partners are developing multi-touch applications on Windows 7," principal group program manager Ian LeGrow said in a statement.

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Norton can't block Bing porn

As follow up to my post from Tuesday about the ability for someone to view porn from within Bing, I just heard from a Symantec spokesperson that the company's Internet monitoring and filtering service, OnlineFamily.Norton, can't yet prevent Bling users from searching sexually explicit terms for websites or videos. The company plans to add Bing to its protected search engines in the next release. Other major search engines, including Google, are covered by the software's SafeSearch feature.

In the mean time, Symantec recommends that parents use OnlineFamily.Norton to block access to all of Bing -- which isn't particularly good for Microsoft.

OnlineFamily is a free Windows and Mac application that can be used to block sites and monitor a child's online behavior. Unlike some Internet monitoring programs, it doesn't operate in stealth mode so, if parents use that feature, kids know that they're web activities are being watched.

Because Bing plays videos within its own site and doesn't require the user to click through, checking the browser history or using monitoring programs like OnlineFamily, would only show that they visited Bing.com, not what videos they watched from within the site.

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Cloud services to get super charged

When it comes to backing up, it's probably safest and most convenient to use a cloud storage service where you store data at remote location via the Internet. However, there's a big obstacle: bandwidth. With most existing broadband services, it can take a couple of hours to upload a few gigabyte of information.

This might change in the near future.

Asankya, a network service company, announced Wednesday that it has improved its parallel networking technology to deliver up to 40 times throughput improvement for Internet-based applications. This, if true, would solve the biggest challenge that hinders the growth and global scale of cloud- and SaaS-based services.

Asankya's new networking technology is a set of patented parallel networking algorithms that significantly increase bi-directional Internet Protocol performance and accelerate encrypted traffic delivery for both ICP- and UDP-based applications. It aggregates throughput across the Internet by using multiple available pathways and removes duplicate packet transmission. The breakthrough algorithms were first funded through grants by the National Science Foundation.

The technology has been deployed by the U.S. government for real-time, interactive video applications delivered over wired and wireless IP networks. It now has been commercialized that means soon you will be able to take advantage of it.

This is exciting news as cloud computing has been on the raise in the last few years. According to the research firm IDC, the cloud computing industry is going to be a $42 billion business by 2012.

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WWDC banners are up: Let the guessing game begin

The WWDC banner hanging inside Moscone Center in San Francisco.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Apple has started decorating San Francisco's Moscone Center in anticipation of the Worldwide Developers Conference, which opens Monday morning.

And as has become tradition, when the banners go up, the seemingly round-the-clock guessing game of what Apple will announce intensifies. This year, the banners say "WWDC: One year later. Light-years ahead." Now the objective for many is parsing that phrase and poring over every image on the banner to extract some sort of meaning.

The phrase itself, plus all the application icons on the banners, indicate the centerpiece of the conference will be the App Store and the new features of the iPhone OS 3.0. Apple said as much in its announcement of the conference keynote address, which is on Monday at 10 a.m. PDT. We know there will be discussion of the updated mobile operating system as well as more details on OS X 10.6, or Snow Leopard. And of course, there have been previous indications that a new iPhone is on the way.

The iPhone Blog points out that the App Store did launch in July, not in early June at WWDC last year, so it hasn'ttechnically been "one year later." Gizmodo thinks "light-years ahead" is a snarky reference to the jumble of competing smartphones debuting soon--particularly the Palm Pre, which launches two days before WWDC opens.

TUAW took out its copy editor's pen, noting that "a year is a measure of time while a light year is a measure of distance." Of course, anyone who remembers "Think Different" knows Apple slogans haven't always been bound by the traditional rules of grammar.

In any case, all the mysteries will be solved by the end of Monday's keynote speech, which we'll be live-blogging. Until then, check out the gallery of photos below that we snapped Wednesday morning.

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Twitter co-founder: We'll have made it when you shut up about us

NEW YORK--Twitter executive Jack Dorsey says he's looking forward to the day when the world stops talking so much about the company he co-founded.

"I think Twitter's a success for us when people stop talking about it, when we stop doing these panels and people just use it as a utility, use it like electricity," said Dorsey, who was on a "Future of Media" panel here Wednesday as part of Internet Week New York. "It fades into the background, something that's just a part of communication. We put it on the same level as any communication device. So, e-mail, SMS, phone. That's where we want to be."

From Jack Dorsey's Twitter feed.

(Credit: Twitter)

For those who stepped in late, Twitter blew up from a cult following of geeks and news junkies into a full-out phenomenon earlier this year, when actor Ashton Kutcher kicked off a challenge with CNN to be the first account to hit one million followers and Oprah Winfrey gave Twitter her seal of approval on the air.

But Dorsey, who served as the company's CEO until he stepped down last October (retaining his chairman post), did say he isn't tired of people asking him what Twitter's business model will ultimately be--a persistent nag among pundits who are skeptical of how fast it's risen without a clear way of making money. He said that the reason why Twitter hasn't come up with a business model yet is because the company needed to let users and developers shape it first.

"I like that question because it speaks to how Twitter came to be," Dorsey said. Many features of Twitter were "behavior(s) that we did not invent. That was usage that we saw, that we made easier. The hash tags that you're seeing today, same thing. The search engine was something that was outside the company."

It's sort of a Catch-22, if Dorsey is to be believed: Had Twitter rushed in with a moneymaking strategy early on, it could have hampered the company's growth. "We took VC money so that we can be patient in that endeavor, and we're going to be patient, we're going to do it right," he insisted. "We're not going to put something on top of it that doesn't fit."

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