Still Eyeing Google, IBM Refreshes Enterprise Search

IBM today released a refreshed version of its free OmniFind Yahoo Edition enterprise search software, designed to better enable companies to quickly find information stored within their organizations and across the Web. In connection with online search player Yahoo, Big Blue launched the first version of the product in December 2006, aiming to give Google a run for its money in the entry-level enterprise search market. Ironically, the relaunch comes the same day that Google formalized a major reseller agreement with PC giant Dell. In spite of the deeply entrenched competition, IBM has high hopes for the new offering, which, like its last edition, still supports a maximum index of up to 500,000 documents and more than 200 file types, Where the newest version of the product shines is in allowing users to easily separate content into different searchable document collections and provides a more intuitive administration console to simplify setup and management. OmniFind Yahoo Edition also offers search support based on the latest open source Lucene indexing library and other enhancements to improve the software's performance, indexing and custom search field capabilities. The product also allows users to define custom fields in the index so that field values can be mapped from HTML meta tags, extracted from the document's own metadata or pushed in from an external application programming interface (API). Perhaps most important for the small- and mid-sized business (SMB) crowd, the search platform can still be installed in three clicks. During the past 11 months, more than 25,000 companies have downloaded the free software from IBM's Web site. The company claims many independent software vendors (ISVs) and businesses have developed additional applications that integrate with or support IBM's search platform. "We worked closely with our community of users, trying to make sure basic enterprise search capability is ubiquitous and free," Aaron Brown, IBM's director of content discovery and search, said in an interview with InternetNews.com. "Our goal is to help organizations more quickly get control of all their unstructured data." An additional goal might be to take down the space's reigning champ. Since 2003, Google has dominated the basic enterprise search arena, first offering the Google Search Appliance then the low-cost Mini, making it easy for small companies to implement search. IBM's free OmniFind Yahoo Edition is designed to offer the same simplicity and power of Google's Mini and Search Appliance, which cost about $2,000 and $30,000, respectively. In January, Google responded to the threat from IBM by adding a bunch of advanced features to its low-end Mini search appliance without bumping up its prices. Google also retaliated by adding enterprise-level security and bundled its OneBox for Enterprise feature into the Mini. OneBox provides search results that include data contained in corporate customer relationship management (define) and human resources applications. It also souped up the Mini's ability to search a company's public Web site and provide analytics on customer behavior patterns. Google today also took another step toward cementing its dominance in the space, signing a reseller agreement with Dell. According to the companies, Dell will begin selling the Google Search Appliance and Google Mini through its direct corporate and public sales channels. "Expanding our channel presence will help meet the growing demand and interest in Google Enterprise solutions worldwide," said Darci Dutton-Reimund, head of North America channels for Google Enterprise. "Dell's partnership is critical to helping us deliver the best of Google business innovation to our rapidly growing customer base Dell and Google have been working together on search since 2006, when Google tapped the PC maker's OEM Industry Solutions Group to use Dell's PowerEdge 2950 as the basis for the Google Search Appliance. Despite the aggressive moves by the space's incumbent, IBM's Brown remains optimistic. "This is a big market and there's plenty of room for multiple vendors in this space to bring multiple perspectives to it," Brown said. "We certainly have seen a lot of traction for our offering and, for us, that's a great jumping-off point to bring larger customers to show companies of all sizes the benefits of the full information management portfolio we offer."

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An Environmental Contaminant Invades the Womb

By Benjamin Lester
ScienceNOW Daily News
26 November 2007

Arsenic is poised to become even more notorious. Scientists have found that if a pregnant woman is exposed, the deadly contaminant can alter the activity of several genes in her fetus, potentially increasing the child's risk of cancer later in life. The find puts new urgency on keeping arsenic out of expectant mothers' drinking water.

Arsenic contaminates drinking water the world over, entering from both naturally occurring deposits and industrial activities. To meet World Health Organization (WHO) standards for safety, arsenic must not be present in drinking water at concentrations greater than 10 parts per billion, but in some countries, such as Bangladesh, the levels far exceed that danger point. Scientists have linked low, chronic exposure to a host of illnesses including diabetes and cancer. In addition, recent work suggests that arsenic exposure before birth can raise cancer risks later in life, but the mechanism has remained unclear.

Wondering whether genes might play a role, researchers at the Chulabhorn Research Institute in Bangkok, Thailand, led by environmental toxicologist Panida Navasumrit focused on the country's Ron Pibul district. Tin mining from the 1960s to the 1980s contaminated groundwater there with arsenic at levels up to 50 times the WHO limit. The team took blood and fingernail clippings from newborns and their mothers in the region and sent 21 samples to Leona Samson, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Samson compared the samples to those from 11 babies in Bangkok whose mothers had not been exposed to arsenic. She found that the expression levels of 11 genes were significantly different in newborns with arsenic-exposed mothers. When Samson used these genes as a guide, she could predict with 83%26#37; accuracy whether the remaining 19 babies had been exposed to the environmental contaminant via their mothers.

The 11 genes play roles in cell growth and death as well as in inflammation, the group reported online 23 November in PLoS Genetics. Although it's not yet known exactly how arsenic causes cancer, Samson notes that chronic inflammation has been linked to stomach cancer. "It therefore seems likely that the arsenic-induced inflammatory response plays at least some role in arsenic-induced cancer," she says.

The paper "opens up potentially very interesting avenues of research" into the fetal effects of environmental contaminants, says Michael Waalkes, a toxicologist at the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Still, he notes that the predictive power of the gene set is low, and "because of the experimental design we can't really say that other exposures might [not] be an issue."

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What's Next For TomorrowNow?

It appears it's now just a matter of time before TomorrowNow, the third-party software service and support firm at the center of so much controversy between software giants SAP and Oracle is sold to another third-party support provider. Last week, SAP announced that TomorrowNow CEO Andrew Nelson and a handful of senior executives at the firm had resigned and that the company was considering a number of strategic options, including the possible sale of the subsidiary it acquired in 2005. Originally intended to undercut Oracle's stranglehold on lucrative service and maintenance contracts following its hostile takeover of PeopleSoft in 2005, the TomorrowNow acquisition has turned into something of an embarrassment for SAP. In March, Oracle filed a lawsuit accusing its archrival of what amounts to industrial espionage. SAP CEO Henning Kagermann acknowledged that someone working for TomorrowNow engaged in "inappropriate" downloads of Oracle support materials but contends SAP did not access any of Oracle's intellectual property. In September, a U.S. District judge set a trial date of February 9, 2009 for the two sides to resolve the matter in court, unless some type of settlement is reached in the interim. After showing most of TomorrowNow's management team the door, SAP is more than ready to move on. At the time of its acquisition, TomorrowNow was a relatively obscure 30-employee outfit with maybe 100 clients. Now that its client base has grown to more than 300 companies and because SAP would seem to be dealing from a position of weakness, there's at least one third-party service and support provider that looks like an ideal suitor for the SAP castoff. Rimini Street, a Las Vegas-based company that provides software support and services for PeopleSoft, Siebel and a handful of J.D. Edwards clients, is mulling the pros and cons of taking TomorrowNow off SAP's hands. Not coincidentally, Rimini Street, which has about 50 clients, was founded by former TomorrowNow co-founder Seth Ravin. "Sure, there's a level of interest," Dave Rowe, Rimini Street's vice president of marketing and alliances, said in an interview with InternetNews.com. "If the opportunity to acquire TomorrowNow presents itself, we'd have to look at it very carefully. There are lot of things to consider to determine whether it's worth it or not." Rowe said his company has fielded "dozens" in the past few months from TomorrowNow clients at least exploring the possibility of switching to Rimini Street for support of their business-critical PeopleSoft and Siebel business applications. He added that Rimini Street's total clientele has "quadrupled" since Oracle filed suit against SAP and TomorrowNow in March. "In terms of a transition, we would be the quickest, the most straightforward and best option," he said. "I have no comment on who else might be interested in acquiring TomorrowNow. I will say that our win rate against TomorrowNow is about 80 percent right now. We got a little juice from the lawsuit. But it's unclear what's really driving the increased activity we've seen lately." It's not too hard to understand why SAP might be eager to let TomorrowNow go at a discount. SAP never confirmed the exact price it paid for TomorrowNow, but industry watchers familiar with the deal characterized the purchase price as "not much," and say it's entirely possibly the attorney fees and any potential settlement it may eventually pay Oracle will likely dwarf the acquisition price. Sun setting on TomorrowNow? In an e-mail to InternetNews.com, SAP spokeswoman Lindsey Held wrote the company had no response to the Rimini Street rumor but reiterated the company is "currently evaluating several strategic options for TomorrowNow's future and sales is one possibility." Until a sale or other strategic decisions are made, Mark White, who was appointed as TomorrowNow's executive chairman in July, will assume the role and responsibilities that Nelson left behind. For now, it's unclear how the TomorrowNow shakeup or a future sale might impact the pending litigation between Oracle and SAP. "Rimini would be a candidate and so would some offshore firms," Vinnie Mirchandani, a former Gartner analyst and founder of the Tampa, Fla.-based IT consulting firm Deal Architect, wrote in an e-mail to InternetNews.com. "If the lawsuit liability can be resolved%26#133;" SAP claims the "majority" of the 150-plus complaints listed in Oracle's lawsuit are unfounded. Kagermann has also publicly stated that he was "surprised and disappointed" that Oracle did not personally contact him when it first discovered the rogue downloads. "I think the SAP team takes a lot of pride in their operation and they were embarrassed by this," Rowe said. "They think they operate at another level than Oracle. Larry %26#91;Ellison's%26#93; is more of a street fighter. They don't want to engage at that level." What both SAP and Oracle want to do, however, is continue raking in huge profits from service and maintenance contracts with their enterprise clients. Last year, SAP reported total sales of slightly more than 9.4 billion euros. But software licenses only accounted for 3 billion euros, or 33 percent, of its total revenue stream. Maintenance checked in at 3.53 billion euros, or 38 percent, and service revenue accounted for 2.72 billion euros, or 29 percent, of its total haul in fiscal 2006. Oracle's mix was similar. New license sales represented $2.48 billion, or 43 percent, of its revenue mix in its latest fiscal year while updates and support brought in $2.27 billion, 39 percent, and services tallied $1.08 billion, or 19 percent, of its total sales. Rimini Street and TomorrowNow compete with the likes of netCustomer in San Jose, Calif., Conexus Partners in Denver, Versytec of Nashua, N.H. and CIBER, based in Greenwood Village, Colo., in the competitive third-party service provider market.

Stocks Tumble Again

Investors suffering through their worst November in seven years had little reason to give thanks Wednesday, as stocks faced another day of steep declines on mortgage market concerns. In midday trade, the Dow was off 129 to 12,881. The Nasdaq fell 34 to 2562, and the S%26amp;P 500 shed 16 to 1423. The S%26amp;P has fallen about 8% this month, equaling its decline of November 2000, and the Nasdaq has dropped 10%. November has historically been one of the best months of the year for stocks, but the market in recent months has been beset with worries about the crumbling credit markets. Countrywide Financial was the mortgage market's biggest loser on Wednesday, shedding 10%, but E*Trade escaped selling for a change with an 8% gain. Ericsson continued to fall a day after warning of weaker than expected sales, losing another 7%. Chip stocks were hit hard, with AMD and Micron off 6% each. Micron fell on negative comments from Morgan Stanley, and Intel lost 2.5% on a Baird "neutral" rating. Google was one of the few big-cap Nasdaq gainers, up less than 1% to $653.34.

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Technical Analysis: Banks Catch a Bid

The financials (first chart below) got us into this mess, and now they're trying to lead us out. The Philadelphia Bank Index gained for the second straight day despite a waterfall of bad news in the financial and tech sectors. Can the rest of the market follow? We're still waiting for a 90% upside volume day to confirm that sellers have been exhausted. The S%26amp;P 500 (second chart) has very strong support between 1427 and 1450, so with any luck buyers will become emboldened here. To the upside, 1483 and 1490 are still the levels to beat. The Dow (third chart) has support at 13,000 and 12,900, and resistance is 13,220 and 13,450. The Nasdaq (fourth chart) really doesn't have obvious support at this point until its 200-day average at 2578. 2650-2670 and 2700 are first resistance levels. And finally, is it really any surprise that bond traders (fifth chart) are pricing in another rate cut? With the brutal selling in even the best of the subprime market (chart six, courtesy of Markit.com), there's nothing about that market that suggests normal functioning. Paul Shread is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) and member of the Market Technicians Association.

Facebook's Beacon Casts Light On Future Of Web Ads

Facebook's new social advertising program and, in particular, the inclusion of users' interactions with sites outside of Facebook through its Project Beacon, is the latest shot fired in the battle to reach even more discrete groups of consumers with Web advertising targeted to their particular interests. The trend, called behavioral targeting or "hypertargeting," leverages the way social networks work in a new and potentially revolutionary way by extending the reach of social networks into consumers' daily Web-based lives and, perhaps, in ways that may disturb them. Facebook's new program introduces a way for advertisers to set up their own profile pages and can be %26#147;friended%26#148; by users much like they already do on MySpace. But Facebook is also inserting advertisements into its social graph%26#151;the feed of activities from friends%26#151;attaching ads related to activity information from them. And with Project Beacon, a program for partner sites, Facebook can now inject information about purchases users make elsewhere on the Web into the feed. "There are some things here that are radically new," said Andrew Frank, analyst at Gartner Research. "Pages for brands is nothing new. %26#91;But%26#93; the behavioral targeting with Beacon, that's a new and experimental idea that could change a lot of the way we think about behavioral targeting." %26#147;Facebook%26#133;evolves advertisements to endorsements, and encourages members to subscribe to a brand in what we are calling %26#145;Fan-Sumers,'%26#148; wrote Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research, in a blog entry discussing the launch. "As consumers share their affinities, brands can advertise using trusted social relationships.%26#148; Facebook gave at least a cursory nod to privacy advocates by allowing users to opt not to allow purchase information show up as a %26#147;story%26#148; in their personal news feeds. %26#147;On the plus side, there seems to be some user opt out if they don't want that story showing up on their Facebook profile,%26#148; Frank said. %26#147;But on the other side, there are some things that don't seem clear in terms of how much a Facebook user can opt out of.%26#148; However, the limitations that Facebook has placed on its social ads, and the requirements the company has placed on vetting businesses, may limit the impact of the program. Facebook will only serve two %26#147;social ads%26#148; to users per day. %26#147;Facebook users can opt to turn off social ads,%26#148; wrote Owyang, %26#147;and friends of that user can %26#145;dial down%26#146; endorsements they see using preferences. We believe that Facebook is attempting to respect the rights of users by giving control to members to %26#145;opt-in%26#146; to become a Fan-Sumer.%26#148; MySpace introduced its own hypertargeting program in July, allowing advertisers to pick "enthusiast" audiences in 10 categories of interests: music, movies, personal finance, gaming, consumer electronics, sports, travel, auto, fashion and fitness. On Monday, the company announced that it had expanded the program to include more than 100 subcategories within those 10, narrowing the focus from, for example, fans of movies in general to horror film enthusiasts. %26#147;The sheer size of MySpace%26#146;s member base, as well as the thriving local business membership will lead to success,%26#148; Owyang said. %26#147;MySpace%26#146;s approach is based on the more well understood idea of being able to use profile data to create micro segments," Frank said. %26#147;They can deliver an enthusiast audience of pretty good scale that advertisers can purchase. It%26#146;s much less of an experimental approach.%26#148; Facebook%26#146;s business profiles are much more exclusive than MySpace%26#146;s, which have been an attractive marketing platform for many small and local businesses. Facebook executives have said that only %26#147;real businesses%26#148; will be allowed to have profile pages on their site. Owyang said that businesses should %26#147;expect an entire team to be crawling and dealing with this qualifying the issue" and potentially disabling business profiles they find suspicious. Between the restrictions on social advertisements delivered and the nature of how Facebook is delivering endorsements, Facebook%26#146;s approach could run into initial problems because of a lack of advertising inventory. However, Owyang believes that the work that marketers will have to go through to obtain %26#147;fans%26#148; will pay off with more trusted marketing. %26#147;This highly targeted system isn%26#146;t just about web advertising,%26#148; he wrote, %26#147;but about brand affinity and hooks into what%26#146;s really important: trusted endorsements from people in a network. This truly is the next generation of advertising.%26#148; Frank was more circumspect. %26#147;I think that anyone who makes a definitive prediction on that has a better crystal ball than I do,%26#148; he said. %26#147;This is a new frontier of mass consumer behavior that hasn't been tested before.%26#148;

Fedora 8 'Werewolf' Shows Its Fangs

Red Hat's Fedora today debuted a major new release that in many ways offers more than any previous version of the community Linux effort. That's because Fedora 8, codenamed "Werewolf," is actually more than just a single release of a single distribution. In addition to a myriad of new features, the release offers at least four different custom versions, or "spins" as Fedora calls them. The spins included in the Fedora 8 release offer packages targeted to specific users like developers and even game players. "Fedora 7 was so much about infrastructure and under-the-hood changes, and now Fedora 8 is showing that with our infrastructure in place, custom 'spins' have been thriving and there is a laundry list of new stuff," said Fedora project leader Max Spevack. "There is so much new stuff that it shows that Fedora is good at innovating and putting new technology into the Linux world and into the hands of users which is one of Fedora's core goals." The ability to generate spins made its first appearance as part of the key infrastructure changes offered by the previous Fedora 7 release was. Fedora 8 gets at least four listed spins: a KDE version that replaces the GNOME Linux desktop, a developer release that has tools specifically geared for developers, an Electronic Lab release for hardware developers and a gamer-friendly release complete with a Linux version of Quake 3. "Some of our community was just tired of people saying you couldn't run cool games on Linux," Spevack said. Fedora 8 isn't all about fun and games, though. The release also includes new firewall and network management tools. The system-config-firewall tool is a GUI that that helps users better control their firewall security and access settings. "This new tool makes it simple for anybody to tweak and administer the firewall settings on their system," Spevack said. "Improvements range from a wizard which walks you, step by step, through configuring your firewall, to a simple checkbox interface for opening and closing services to the outside world." Fedora 8's new network manager 0.7 release adds further network stability and manageability enhancements for both wired and wireless networks. The bevy of new firewall and network management capabilities potentially could pave the way for a future network router-specific Fedora spin, although Spevack didn't say whether such a plan is in the works. Virtualization also gets a bump with new secure remote management capabilities for the Xen and KVM hypervisors. Fedora's virt-manager application can now securely manage multiple remote virtual servers. Spevack said the new virtualization security features represent yet another step in Red Hat's continued development of virtualization technology on Linux. "Each of our last several releases has had something new in virtualization," Spevack said. "Originally, we considered virtualization to be successful if we could get it running. Now we've gotten to the point where more focus is on making sure remote stuff is secure. It shows that the virtualization work we've been doing is useful, and as such, more work is being done on making sure everything is good and secure." Fedora 8 also takes aim at a long-standing and often frustrating issue for users -- namely the ability to play proprietary media formats, such as MP3s on their desktops. Thanks to an application called "Codec Buddy," Fedora 8 will attempt to deal with the issue, which has prickly legal and philosophical implications. Red Hat is in the United States, there are certain patent and copyright laws that prohibit Fedora from redistribution of proprietary codecs, Spevack said. Additionally, Fedora has a strong Free Software position and does not include software that requires further proprietary licensing. The application aims to sidestep these issues by pointing users to a location outside of the U.S., from where they can freely download a legal MP3 decoder at zero cost. "Codec Buddy is an attempt to help users who want to get at patent-encumbered media files in a legal way," Spevack said.

Microsoft's 'Centro' Finally Gets a Name

After two years of talking about it, Microsoft has finally given its forthcoming server bundle for mid-sized businesses a name. Previously codenamed Centro, the package, which is slated to ship in the second half of 2008, is now officially called Windows Essential Business Server. The server bundle is based around Windows Server 2008, which itself is due out in the first quarter of next year. Public beta testing of Essential Business Server is scheduled to begin in the first half of 2008, according to a company statement. It is currently in a limited "private" beta test. With Essential Business Server, Microsoft is taking a cue from the success it has had over the past decade with what is now called Windows Small Business Server (SBS). The idea is to provide all the server pieces %26#150; e-mail and scheduling, Internet access, security, systems management, and an optional database -- that a company needs in a simple to install and manage, business server solution. Except in this case, instead of small firms, the integrated server bundle is designed to provide basically a plug-and-play solution for mid-sized businesses, which the company defines as companies with at least a few dozen, up to 250 PCs. Microsoft figures there are some 1.4 million businesses that fit that description worldwide. To date, that's been a hard market for Microsoft to service because, unlike large enterprise customers, there are a lot of them but they don't have a lot of money to spend. "It's very hard to reach that market because generally you can't afford to send a salesperson out to them," Michael Cherry, lead analyst for operating systems at researcher Directions on Microsoft, told InternetNews.com. Like SBS, Essential Business Server is expected to be available from both hardware partners and at retail, as well as via third-party solution vendors. Additionally, many prospective customers have very small IT departments, if that. Therefore, any solution Microsoft offers needs to have as little impact as possible in terms of installation and maintenance, while still providing the functions that mid-sized businesses need. "If you're crossing that line, these are the products that %26#91;IT%26#93; person will want to deploy, because those are the needs of the organization," Cherry said. The "standard" edition of Essential Business Server will include Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, Forefront Security for Exchange, System Center Essentials, and Internet Security and Acceleration Server, all in an integrated bundle, the company statement said. A "premium" edition will add a copy of SQL Server 2008. To make the bundle simpler to administrate, Essential Business Server will also include a single client access license that works for all products included in the bundle, the company said. Microsoft has also announced some of the partners it is working with on Essential Business Server. For instance, the company said that Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, IBM, and Intel will support the server bundle, and that software partners, including CA, Citrix, FullArmor, McAfee, Quest, Symantec and Trend Micro, plan to provide "add-ins" for the package. The company first announced the product two years ago. However, Cherry does not take Microsoft to task for taking so long. Because it's a bundle, and because the integration among the products is crucial, the package results from a careful balancing act among different versions of the products. For example, because it's based around Windows Server 2008, Essential Business Server has to wait until that product ships. "The question rapidly becomes which version of a product do you take?" Cherry said, adding that creates dependencies among all the various product development teams. Microsoft will be demonstrating Essential Business Server at its TechEd: IT Forum conference in Barcelona, Spain. The company has not yet announced pricing.

PrivacyGroupsSeek'DoNotCall'ListforWebAds

Consumerprivacygroupsarepushingforincreasedregulatoryoversightofonlineadvertising,includinga"DoNotTrack"registrythatwouldbancompaniesfromtrackingonlineusersandtargetingadsbasedontheiractivities.Thegroups,whichincludetheCenterforDemocracyandTechnology,theElectronicFrontierFoundationandConsumerAction,sentaproposaltotheFederalTradeCommission(FTC)askingforittooverseeamandatory"DoNotTrack"registry.Theregistrywouldlooselyfollowthemodelofthesuccessfulnationalandstate"DoNotCall"registriesthatpreventtelemarketersfrommakingunsolicitedsalespitchestoconsumerswhohavesigned.Theonlineadvertisingindustry,however,haslongclaimedthattargetedadsaremorerelevanttoconsumers,andthusmoreusefulandinterestingtothem.IntheirpetitiontotheFTC,thegroupsalsosaidtheywantonlineadvertiserstoinstantlyrevealtoWebusersthespecificsoftheinformationtheyaretracking."Theonlinetrackingandtargetingofconsumers...needstobelimitedsothatconsumerscanexercisemeaningful,granularpreferencesbasedontimelyandcontextualdisclosuresthatareunderstandableonwhicheverdevicesconsumerschoosetouse,"thegroupswroteintheirproposaltotheFTC."Specifically,weurgetheU.S.FederalTradeCommissiontotakeproactivestepstoadequatelyprotectconsumersasonlinebehavioraltrackingandtargetingbecomemoreubiquitous."Thegroups'proposalcomesasAOL,oneofthelargestplayersinonlinemedia,isundertakingeffortstoaddressaglitchinhowitsWebsiteshandleconsumerrequeststoopt-outofreceivingmarketingmessages.Theonlinemediagianttodayannouncedanimprovementtoitsopt-outsystem,whichbetterprotectscustomersfrombeingmistakenlysolicitedbythecompany'sWebsitesifthey'veaskedtonolongerreceivemarketingmessages.Typically,ifauserdecidesnottoacceptgettingmessagesoradsfromoneWebsite,thatpreferenceisnotedinaWebbrowsercookie.However,underthecurrentsystem,iftheythendeletethatcookie,thatsitenolongercantellthattheuserhasoptedoutofreceivingmarketingmessages.Now,anewWebcachingtechniquefromAOL'sbehavioraltargetingunitTacodaisdesignedtopreserveusers'opt-outchoicesacrossthecompany'snetworkofonlineproperties."Oneoftheproblemswasusersoverwritingthatuniquecookie,"JulesPolonetsky,ChiefPrivacyOfficeratAOL,toldInternetNews.com."People'schoicesneedtoberespected,sowe'reenhancingtheopt-outprocess."AOL,whichpurchaseditsTacodaunitearlierthisyeartobetterassistitintargetingadsacrossitssites,saiditisunsureaboutthenecessityoftheprivacygroups'proposalstotheFTC."We'restudyingthisproposaltoseeifit'sfeasible,"Polonetskysaid."What'simportantisconsumerawareness.Thereisanopt-outprocessupandrunning."ThemovecomesasAOLandthelargeronlineadvertisingindustryarefacingrenewedcallsforincreasedconsumerprotection.Lastyear,afterleaking20millionsearchqueries,aclass-actionsuitfiledinCaliforniaagainstAOLallegedthatthecompanyviolatedtheElectronicCommunicationsPrivacyActandasetofCaliforniafairbusinesslaws.OnlineprivacyadvocateshavealsosharplycriticizedGoogle'sproposedacquisitionofWebadplayerDoubleClick,whichispendingregulatoryapproval.IntestimonygivenduringSenatecommitteehearingsonthesubject,ahandfulofcompetitorsandconsumeradvocatescautionedthatthemergercouldhavedireimplicationsforonlineprivacy.TheannouncementsalsocomeadaybeforetakingAOLandotheronlineleadersareslatedtotakepartinatwo-dayforumonprivacyissuesandtrackinginonlineadvertising,heldbytheFTC.Thecommissionsaidtheeventwillcomeaspartofitsefforttoexaminetheeffectsofbehavioraladvertisingonconsumerprivacy.

Stocks Rocket on Rate Cut

Stocks posted strong gains Wednesday after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter point but suggested that it was done cutting rates for now.

The Fed gave the market the rate cut it expected, but in its accompanying policy statement, central bankers said that growth will likely slow because of the housing market crisis, but that "the upside risks to inflation roughly balance the downside risks to growth," a neutral statement that essentially warned traders not to expect any more rate cuts for now.

The move followed a Commerce Department report that said the economy grew at a stronger than expected 3.9% pace in the third quarter.

Stocks traded in volatile fashion after the Fed's action, giving up early gains only to close near the highs of the day.

Google closed above $700 a share for the first time on reports that it plans a wireless venture with Verizon. With a $220.7 billion market cap, Google is now the fifth most highly valued U.S. company, behind AT%26T, Microsoft, GE and Exxon Mobil. In recent days, the stock has passed Citigroup, Bank of America, Procter %26 Gamble and Cisco Systems.

Dell rose 2.7% after filing amended financial statements for four years, effectively ending the company's long accounting nightmare and paving the way to resume share buybacks.

Microsoft gained 3.5% to a fresh multiyear high on bullish comments from Sanford Bernstein, as the stock continued to benefit from last week's better than expected earnings report.

Most big technology names posted gains on the day, but Sun Microsystems and eBay traded lower.

SiRF Technology soared 28% after beating estimates, and MicroStrategy, Answerthink, Pericom Semi and CommVault were other earnings gainers.

First Consulting gained 27% on a takeover offer from Computer Sciences, while Garmin fell 10% on its results and an offer to acquire Tele Atlas N.V.

The Nasdaq surged 43 to a new multiyear high of 2859, the S%26P gained 18 to 1549, and the Dow rose 137 to 13,930. Volume rose to 3.67 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.57 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 24-8 margin on the NYSE, and 20-10 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 79% on the NYSE, and 74% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 248-92 on the NYSE, and 159-139 on the Nasdaq.

Google Gadgets Go Into The Wild

Google's announcement of OpenSocial Wednesday night marks something of a turning point for the technology darling.

As the company struggles to extend its dominance in online search advertising to radio, TV and print, the OpenSocial project creates a set of open application programming interfaces (APIs) that will let developers write widgets to run on a variety of social networks, including its own.

Venture Beat published what it said was a draft of the press release, still officially under embargo, which said, "The proliferation of unique APIs across dozens of social Web sites is forcing developers to choose which ones to write applications for %26#150; and then spend their time writing separately for each."

"OpenSocial gives developers of social applications a single set of APIs to learn for their application to run on any OpenSocial-enabled Web site. By providing these simple, standards-based technologies, OpenSocial will speed innovation and bring more social features to more places across the Web."

A Google spokesman said in an e-mail, "There's a lot of innovation that will be spurred simply by creating a standard way for developers to run social applications in more places. With the input and iteration of the community, we hope OpenSocial will become a standard set of technologies for making the Web social."

OpenSocial's purpose is to test the "social graph" concept that illustrates how individuals are connected to others across Web-based applications and discrete social networks like Orkut or Friendster.

According to Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape and the social networking site Ning, OpenSocial is not a Web services API, but rather a way for external applications to plug into a hosted environment, which he dubbed the container.

The external application can make JavaScript calls to retrieve information from the container or perform functions within the container, such as "give me a list of all of this user's friends" or "inject this event into this user's activity feed." Ning is a member of the OpenSocial consortium.

Andreessen said it took only a few days for Ning to implement OpenSocial, adding that Ning, Orkut, Hi5, LinkedIn, iLike, Flixster, and Slide would also demonstrate working code.

While some see OpenSocial as Google's attempt to combat the growing popularity of Facebook with users and advertisers, Andreessen thinks developers will continue to use both because they'll be able to run multiple front-ends%26#151;for Facebook, OpenSocial and others%26#151;with the same back-end code.

LinkedIn founder Adam Nash wrote on his blog that OpenSocial would make it easy for developers to write business applications that LinkedIn users might like.

As Google developer Brad Fitzpatrick, founder of the early blogging community LiveJournal, explained it on his blog, "People are getting sick of registering and re-declaring their friends on every site," and "developing 'social applications' is too much work."

"Facebook's answer seems to be that the world should just all be Facebook apps," he wrote. "While Facebook is an amazing platform and has some amazing technology, there's a lot of hesitation in the developer/Web 2.0 community about being slaves to Facebook, dependent on their continued goodwill, availability, future owners, not changing the rules, etc."

Fitzpatrick's proposed solution was to make the social graph a community asset that would pool data from the various sites without making any one company its owner. As of August 17, he had prototyped a social graph comprising data from five community sites, including working implementations of the APIs, and had established a Google Group for technical discussions.

King of the open APIs

Google has seen terrific usage of its APIs. Its extraordinarily successful and developer-beloved Maps APIs kicked off a cottage industry of mashups, while the enterprise version provides high functionality for business uses. In July, Google opened its proprietary its geo-spatial mark-up language, KML 2.2, to the Open Geospatial Consortium.

But the search giant's stature has not been as large outside of its core competencies; Orkut, its social networking site, had 24.1 million users worldwide in June, according to comScore, compared with 114.1 million for MySpace. And Google Gadgets, its own form of widgets, isn't among the top 10, according to comScore.

OpenSocial could extend Google's reach into widget advertising. It launched a beta service, Google Gadget Ads, in September. Google Gadget Ads lets advertisers develop widgets that are distributed just like ads across Google's advertising network. A standard widget format would make it easier for Google to distribute them to users within other social networks.

The move also strengthens Google's ties to outside developers. They'll need to go to Google's sandbox to test the APIs and their widgets, um, gadgets.

It's interesting to note the clash between the company's old-school PR tactics and the more open attitudes of Silicon Valley startups.

Google planned a splashy launch event Wednesday night, and, according to the blog TechCrunch, made participants sign non-disclosure agreements, yet leaked the story to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, tech gurus like Andreessen, Fitzpatrick and Nash followed developer norms and spoke openly about the projects, spreading the information all over the Web.