Finally I can use my favorite browser on iPhone: The Chrome!!

YES!!! I am really happy to use my favorite browser on my favorite device.... iPhone.. Google launched Chrome as App on iPhone.. Supposedly to counter Apple's move to replace them as their default search engine and as default map. We will come to this issue later but for now let me express my happiness and joy of using Chrome on iPhone.. for most of the users it is not big deal.. in fact I know many folks who like chrome but they don't use it for the sake of privacy issue surrounding Google's data tracking policies.. However, for me, Chrome is one browser which is super fast and asks for least amount of plug-in downloads and more importantly understands me.. senses what I am going to do next and propose next step automatically.. I don't care how much data it collects and send it to Google. I any how feel that openness is best policy.. and as long as I am not doing anything illegal or supposedly morally bad.. I don't care.. I use this very blog to express my happiness or sadness or frustration to entire world any how.. so why do I care if anyone is tracking me or not.. as long as they deliver and simplify my life further I don't have any problem with tracking or privacy... as long as it is mutual.. as long as they give me back something in lieu of taking and collecting my data, I am fine..

I think we went too much into this privacy nonsense..

Coming back to another topic, which I feel is an indicator of Apple's arrogance and greed and foolishness.. Replacing Google as their default search engine and map.. Do what you are best at.. get other's best and don't try to mess up with their best..  I don't think that Apple understand this for now.. they will soon.. the same arrogance, greed and pride and sense of doing everything on their own, sank Sony.. that despite best in many technologies.. they are a dying company.. Apple.. on the other hand is on rise for now.. but if they don't accept the fact that this era is about collaboration and co-operation and leveraging best from others.. they will go Sony way soon.. Pie is way to big.. you don't want to even attempt to eat it all.. that thought itself will kill you before you even attempt it. I think, Apple needs to just stick to their best.. they create best machines and they are best in marrying hardware with software.. they are best in providing user experience.. this user experience is not just all of it their.. it is best because they provide framework which can be leveraged by other great players like Netflix, Facebook, Google and many other smart and small companies on their devices and provide fulfilling feeling to users.. If you try to restrict it.. or constrain it by trying doing on your own.. you are going to be next Sony..

INTERNET

Google’s Chrome browser comes to Apple’s gadgets

iPhone, iPad users can access software and Drive feature

By Brandon Bailey

bbailey@mercurynews.com 

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple fans can now use Google’s popular Chrome browser on their iPhones and iPads, the Internet search giant said Thursday, while announcing several initiatives aimed at making it easier for people to spend more time in Google’s “cloud.”

Google also announced it will compete with Amazon and other commercial tech companies by renting out data center capacity for software developers or Internet businesses that need lots of computing power and don’t want to build their own.

But most of the focus was on software Thursday, the second day of Google’s annual I/O conference, after a previous day that highlighted new consumer hardware products from the Mountain View company. Google, which is increasingly competing with Apple, Amazon and Facebook for the attention of Internet users, showed off new features for the Chrome browser and for Drive, its online service for storing and working with documents, photos and other digital material.

Chrome is already the world’s most-used Internet browser, according to the research firm StatCounter, which reported that Google’s browseredgedpastMicrosoft’s Internet Explorer last month. Google says the number of active Chrome users grew from 160 million users last year to 310 million in June.

Those numbers should grow further now that Chrome is available for Apple’s popular mobile gadgets, where a version of Apple’s Safari browser has been the default choice for most users. Having Chrome on Apple devices could protect Google’s search advertising business, added Ben Schachter of Macquarie Securities in a report, even if Apple goes through with a rumored move to replace Google as the default search engine on Apple’s browser. 

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STEPHEN LAM/REUTERS

Google executive Sundar Pichai said the company wants to make it easier to use its software “across all your platforms.” 

In an interview, Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said Chrome, which is known for speed, may not perform as well on Apple devices because of differences in Apple’s operating system. Even so, he added, “the smart thing” for Google is “to be available on as many devices as they can.” 

Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai echoed that point Thursday when he said the company wants to make it easier to use its software “across all your platforms and all your devices, so that you can live online in the cloud, seamlessly.” 

As an example, Chrome already has a feature that remembers bookmarks and other settings. But Google vice president Brian Rakowski demonstrated that the browser can also remember recently visited sites and show them on other computers and smartphones, provided the user signs on with a Google account. 

Drive is also available for Apple’s mobile gadgets and has new features that let users work on files when they aren’t connected to the Internet; changes are uploaded automatically when the user is back online. Product manager Clay Bavor also showed off Drive’s search feature, which works with documents and even pictures. 

Contact Brandon Bailey at 408-920-5022; follow him at Twitter.com/ BrandonBailey. 

Yet Another Tablet!!! from Googlleeee

It was expected.. so here comes Google with another Android Tablet in sub-iPad  market. Prices point and size makes it clear that they don't want to go head on with Apple. So we will have to wait for couple of years more to see real good competitor for iPad.

I don't think that these $199 tablets are going to dent iPad market any time soon. These tablets are going to be second or third optional device or may be entry point tablets for kids.. I don't know.. but they are not going to be choice for any serious user with good valet. Let us see.

Unless these tablets have something magical which will be really different than iPad..

In my view, even if they go for these 7 inch tablets, Google and Amazon should not keep them really low end. Gone are the times when you can launch product in iPhone/iPad style of initially launching bare-bone device and keep on adding features slowly into it. That was then, when there was no iPad to refer to. Bar for Amazon and Google is already set really high by Apple. They need to accept it.. In the mean time they can launch these dinky tablets as an experiment and if users buy them good.. otherwise there is always next version..

However, Nexus 7 has front end camera which was not there in Amzon's tablet and they are also throwing $25 on Google Play store.. Screen resolution looks okay.. also, with original Android on it, hope that it will be much more open than Amzon fire. but then, Amazon should be coming up with next beefier version any time soon.. which I am sure should be better in terms of feature than Galaxy 7. Good news is that due to competition, they can't even dream of charging more to their next versions..

Good Luck with this Nexus thingy!!! I don't see myself buying it anytime soon unless.. unless.. I hear from you all something magical about it..

S.F. SOFTWARE CONFERENCE

Google takes full step into selling own product line

Search giant unveils its first tablet and a home entertainment console

By Brandon Bailey

bbailey@mercurynews.com 

SAN FRANCISCO — Pushing further into the consumer electronics business, Google announced Wednesday that it will sell a new digital home entertainment console and a 7-inch tablet computer aimed at bolstering its competition with Apple, Amazon and other rivals.

The giant Internet search company also showed off a host of new products and features for its Android mobile operating system, including new TV, film and magazine offerings in Google’s online store, and a voice-enabled search function that is Google’s answer to Apple’s vaunted digital assistant Siri.

While those seem far removed from Google’s core business of Internet search advertising, analysts say the new products are part of a strategy aimed at preserving Google’s dominance in that lucrative business. To do that, it hopes to deliver a broad range of digital media — books, music, films and other services — within an ecosystem of Google products at a time when other companies are luring consumers with similar services. 

KARL MONDON/STAFF 

Google unveils its Nexus 7 at the I/O conference Wednesday.

“It’s less about the hardware and more about the experience,” said Richard Shim, a mobile-computing expert with NPD Display-Search. “They are pushing into new services, but at the end of the day it’s an indirect way of highlighting their core business.” 

Google also invoked its freewheeling roots during the kickoff of the company’s annual three-day software conference. At one point, co-founder Sergey Brin bounded on stage at the Moscone Center to show off a pet project, the computer- in-a-headset known as Google Glass. A video screen behind him showed a team of sky divers inside a blimp flying over San Francisco, and the convention center audience cheered as the sky divers — wearing the cyborg-looking Google Glass headsets — leapt from the blimp and landed on the Moscone building’s roof. 

Images from their headsets were streamed over an Internet connection. The device, which also can receive data and messages, is still under development. 

As expected, Google CEO Larry Page did not appear, after the company said last week that he lost his voice under undisclosed circumstances. Brin said Wednesday that he’s “not worried” about Page, but “we didn’t want to stress him out by having him talk a lot.” 

The most anticipated news of the day, however, was the unveiling of Google’s new $199 Nexus 7 tablet, which will be manufactured by Asus according to Google’s design, and sold by Google through its online Google Play store. Google is using the tablet to showcase the features of its newest Android software, known by the code-name Jelly Bean. Microsoft is following a similar strategy with its own tablet, showing off new Windows software. 

“We wanted to provide the best of the Google experience, the way that Google envisions it,” said Android product director Hugo Barra. The tablet has a high-definition display and enough processing power for fast-paced video games, the company said. But Google Play director Chris Yerga stressed that the tablet is also well-suited to reading magazines and books. That’s a sign that Google is also positioning the Nexus 7 against Amazon’s popular Kindle Fire, which to date is one of the few Android-based tablets that has sold particularly well. 

Android is the world’s most popular operating software for smartphones, but Apple has dominated the tablet market with its iPad, which runs on Apple’s own software. Like Google, Amazon and Apple sell books, videos, music and other digital material over the Internet. 

Google’s new home entertainment console, dubbed Nexus Q, seems aimed at competing with similar streaming devices made by Apple, Sonos, Roku and others. While most consumer electronics devices sold in the United States are made by contractors in Asia, The New York Times reported that the Nexus Q is being assembled at an undisclosed Silicon Valley location. 

The bowling-ball shaped console can be controlled from an Android smartphone or tablet. But analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy said he’s skeptical it will be a hit because its $299 price is higher than competing devices with similar capabilities. 

While Google doesn’t have much practice making and selling its own hardware — other than a Nexus phone that was not a success two years ago — Google has put years of work into developing voice-recognition technology. It already offers voice-enabled translation and navigation services. The new voice-enabled features in Jelly Bean go further by answering spoken questions with a naturalsounding female voice. 

In a demonstration, it appeared to function in a manner similar to Apple’s Siri. Analysts have warned that Siri could be a threat to Google’s core Internet search business if users of Apple devices find it easier to simply talk to their iPhones rather than type in a Google query. “Google has to do something just as good with voice because that may be where search is going for mobile devices,” said Al Hilwa, a software industry analyst with IDC. 

From the demonstration, it wasn’t clear how wide a range of questions can be answered by Google’s voice search service. Executives also showed another new search feature in Jelly Bean, called Google Now, which provides automatic updates on information the user has previously searched for — such as the status of an airline flight or the score of a baseball game. Executives said the service is only available for certain types of queries, although they plan to add more capabilities in the future. 

Follow Brandon Bailey at Twitter.com/brandonbailey. 

 

Microsoft going Social..

Seems okay step to me. Microsoft seems to be doing okay on strategy and execution. Interesting thing will be on how well they assimilate these different components in their core office and share point suits.

Enterprise Social Networking is a big area and in my view still very much under developed. All these Enterprise Collaboration Management (ECM) vendors are trying their best to copy and mimic Facebook while navigating with myriad rules and complexities of enterprise relationships within and outside of company and partners. They all seems to be okay but still need more ease of use and more importantly transfer of ownership of content and pages from one individual to another as people move on to different places and roles. I think rationalization of this without any complex administration is going to be key for success of any of these ECMs. Rest all things can be easily copied from FB.

Biggest threat to these guys is again their biggest gorilla Facebook.. Right now, FB is on fringe of ECM. It will be interesting when and if ever they get into ECM.

Lastly, good job Yammer guys.. Keep on bringing more money and do proud to Silicon Valley!!!

Cheers!!




Yammer CEO David Sacks, left, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shake hands after officially announcing Monday that Microsoft will acquire Yammer for $1.2 billion cash.

MICROSOFT’S $1.2 BILLION ACQUISITION

Yammer deal lifts eyebrows

Analyst says software giant’s foray into social realm too late; others say it aids other products

By Peter Delevett

pdelevett@mercurynews.com 

Confirming rumors that had been swirling for weeks, Microsoft on Monday said it will buy San Francisco social-networking startup Yammer for $1.2 billion in cash.

Yammer, founded in 2008, lets business customers set up private, Facebook-style networks among employees and clients. It boasts 5 million users from such companies as Deloitte, 7-Eleven and Ford, CEO David Sacks said Monday.“We had a vision for how social networking could fundamentally change the way people work,” said Sacks, the former chief operating officer of PayPal. He will continue to lead Yammer as it joins Microsoft’s Office division, which also includes SharePoint and Skype. Sacks said linking up with such “household name” business applications will help Yammer grow even more rapidly.

But Microsoft is still lagging rivals such as Salesforce and Oracle, which already have made big-money moves into the social-networking realm. 

San Francisco-based Salesforce offers a socialnetworking tool called Chatter and this month bought cloud-based socialmedia company Buddy Media for nearly $700 million. Redwood City’s Oracle recently snapped up two software companies in the social-media sector, Vitrue and Collective Intellect, as part of its push into cloud computing. 

“Microsoft is too late to the social party,” Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry wrote in an email Monday. “Imitation is not a strategy.” 

Still, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Monday said he was intrigued to learn more about Yammer’s “freemium” sales model, which relies on individual users inside a company to adopt the product at no cost, then gives that company’s IT department an option to pay for more advanced security and support after a critical mass of users has developed. 

“They were pretty unique in the viral adoption model,” Ballmer said of Yammer. 

Constellation Research co-founder Ray Wang said Monday that Yammer’s ability to convert about 19 percent of its free users to paid customers is at least double the industry average. He generally praised the deal, while adding that Microsoft’s own failure to develop new products has forced it to become more reliant on acquisitions. 

Tony Zingale — CEO of Yammer rival Jive Software, which went public last year — predicted that Yammer will struggle to remain innovative as part of the Redmond, Wash., behemoth. “At Microsoft, ‘move really fast’ is not in their vocabulary,” he quipped. 

Zingale said Palo Altobased Jive is already making plans to woo away Yammer customers, and he predicted Salesforce will do the same. 

On the other hand, Zingale said, the deal “once and for all validates that the social enterprise software space is here to stay. When somebody like Microsoft says they’ve got to have it, I think we’re heading for a very vibrant market.” 

Karl Keirstead, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets who follows Jive’s stock, agreed with that assessment, noting that Jive’s shares have risen about 18 percent in the two weeks since rumors of Microsoft’s interest in Yammer surfaced. (Jive closed trading Monday slightly down at $19.75, while Microsoft finished at $29.86 — a decline of 2.7 percent.) Keirstead — whose firm helped underwrite Jive’s December IPO — estimated Yammer’s yearly revenue at about $25 million to $30 million, which would mean Microsoft paid a multiple of 50 times revenue for the company. Yammer had reportedly amassed $142 million in venture capital from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and former Facebook vice president Chamath Palihapitiya , among others. 

With Jive recently trading at 10 to 12 times revenue, and with hefty numbers being shelled out for Yammer and Buddy Media, Keirstead predicted it won’t be long until another big suitor such as SAP makes a bid for Jive. “It just feels like there’s an M&A frenzy around anything that says social enterprise,” he said. 

Microsoft did not say when it expects the deal to close. 

While Ballmer predicted his army of sales reps could boost the number of Yammer customers who agree to pay for the product, Keirstead thinks the merger might ultimately be less about bolstering Yammer as a stand-alone product and more about integrating its features into Share-Point. The cloud-based enterprise offering includes email, file sharing and the Microsoft Office suite of applications. 

“Microsoft, in an effort to protect its SharePoint franchise, needs to make it more social and do so fast,” Keirstead said. The $1.2 billion layout for a company with modest revenues, he added, is “a little bit of a defensive move.” 

Staff writer Jeremy C. 

Owens contributed to this report. Contact Peter Delevett at 408-271-3638. 

We need Gigabit Ethernet in everyone's home

Just like telephone lines, water pipes, roads, electric cables.. We now need Gigi ethernet at everyone's home.. I think time has come for all the governments to mandate it.. start with at least new houses or developments.. Once everyone sees advantages of it and usage explodes.. it will usher us into new era of growth and all together different era when we will mock about current DSL/Cable connection the way we are mock dial-up connection or even worse, the good old Plain old Telephone (POT).. 


all these advancements in wireless have very limited application unless, pipes coming to home gets fatter and with their current diet restrictions, they need to be substantially fatter.. 


Though, 11ac will have its own application.. especially for in-home media center to multiple display device video on full HD or even super HD (with Apple's Retina display push..). It will definitely eliminate any need of any wiring in the houses which will be good relief.. 


Keep up the good work!!!


Cheers!!!

New Wi-Fi standard speeds up streaming

Protocol will provide faster coverage throughout home

By John Boudreau

jboudreau@mercurynews.com 

It wasn’t long ago families squabbled over who was hogging the TV remote control. Now they face off over who’s hogging the bandwidth.

As the number of wireless devices increases in homes — multiple TVs, smartphones, tablets, laptops — networks are getting bogged down.

But help is on the way.

A new Wi-Fi protocol — dubbed 802.11ac — will increase data speeds by as much as three times over the most recent standard to 1.3 gigabytes per second. It is also six times more power efficient and will provide faster and more reliable Wi-Fi coverage throughout the home.

Broadcom is the first wireless chip manufacturer to come out with what it is calling 5G Wi-Fi. While the new standard won’t increase the speed of data coming in through the so-called Internet pipes to the home — such as DSL or fiber-optic cables — it will enable people to view and stream video already stored on, say, PCs or DVRs, much more quickly.

“If you are paying for 50 megabytes per second from AT&T, having a 5G Wi-Fi router in your home doesn’t change that,” said Dino Bekis, Broadcom’s senior director for access and wireless entertainment. “What it does do is allow you to share content between devices — smartphones, smart TVs, etc. — much faster and more reliably than before.”

The new standard underscores the surging demand for bandwidth to handle the large amounts of video Americans are consuming every day. “Video use has been growing exponentially,” he said.

According to research by Cisco Systems, 1 million minutes of video content will race across networks every second by 2015, and the number of gadgets connected to the Internet will be twice the world’s population. Between 2010 and 2015, mobile data traffic is expected to soar 26 times.

“The need to stream multiple videos simultaneously (in homes) is there,” said Philip Solis, analyst with ABI Research. “There is a need for 802.11ac.” 

A number of manufacturers, including San Jose-based Netgear, are now rolling out routers embedded with Broadcom’s 5G Wi-Fi chips. And makers of devices, from smartphones to laptops and smart TVs, will start embedding the new chips in coming months. Taiwan computer maker Asus recently launched the first laptop equipped with the new Wi-Fi protocol. 

The new technology could add to the momentum of Americans turning away from cable TV for their entertainment, said David Henry, Netgear vice president of product management. “If folks are going to cut the cord, they need to be able to stream multiple videos at the same time,” he said. 

The new Wi-Fi standard, which operates on the wider 5 GHz radio spectrum provides more room to transfer data with less traffic, Bekis explained. “Think about it as a brand new freeway opening up with no cars,” he said. 

It’s a faster and more efficient way to move information, Bekis added. So it would be like packing a bus that can move down the highway at the speed of a Ferrari. 

In the home, that would mean the kids can watch a video in the family room, Dad can stream a movie from the DVR to his bedroom TV, and a visiting cousin could transfer a vacation video from a tablet to another TV — all simultaneously, he explained. 

Because the protocol is able to transfer data more quickly, and more efficiently, it uses significantly less power, Bekis said. “For a given amount of data, you can transmit it at one-sixth the power,” he said. 

The new protocol will make Wi-Fi signals faster and more reliable throughout the home, which usually get weaker the further one is from the router, said Netgear’s Henry. 

Routers sold with the new 5G Wi-Fi chip are expected to be compatible with devices that don’t have the new technology and operate on the more congested 2.4 GHz radio spectrum. 

“When you put this in your home, you won’t notice anything different,” Bekis said. But “as soon as you have a device that is embedded with 5G Wi-Fi, you are immediately going to be able to transmit data at these higher rates.” 

Contact John Boudreau at 408-278-3496; follow him at Twitter.com/svwriter 

Mac Book Pro with Retina Display - Impressive.. nah..

Sadly I also agree with Troy on this. I went to Mac Store with such a high excitement to look at MBP with Retina display.. Unfortunately (or as per my wife, "Fortunately!!") my eyes with -5 power glasses on it couldn't make any difference when comparing next to regular MBP. In fact, after seeing this and even regular MBP, I became even bigger fan of Mac Book Air (MBA). It's 13 inch display was looking much better than both MBP and MBP-R. It's form factor and feel in hand and key board and everything about it was simply magical to me..

I know I am going to get big rebuttal from one of my very good friend and family member about this article, but, sadly, I can't agree about this. Retina display is at the most good for iPad at least for common people like us. It is definitely nice to have.. I may pay few bucks here and there for it.. but not even couple of hundreds..


Apple’s newchapter

MacBook Pro is beautiful computer, but it’s more expensive than typical laptop

I know I’m supposed to be blown away by Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Retina display — but I’m not.

It’s a very nice computer. And the screen, which according to Apple has such a high resolution that the typical user can’t see its individual pixels, is beautiful.

But compared with the typical laptop, the MacBook Pro with Retina display — couldn’t Apple have come up with a catchier name?

— is very expensive. And the MacBook Pro’s display turns out to have limited benefits, particularly for those who are not creative professionals.

The new Retina display MacBook Pro is Apple’s attempt to remake its professional line of notebooks in the image of its popular MacBook Air computers. As it did with the Air, Apple built the new Pro around flash storage.

So, like the Air, the Retina Pro lacks both a  hard drive and a DVD drive. 

TECH FILES

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JOSIE LEPE/STAFF 

The result is a computer that is more than a pound lighter than the comparable hard-drive MacBook Pro and is more than half a centimeter thinner. The flash drive makes the Retina Pro a superfast machine. From a cold boot, I was able to get to its login screen within 15 seconds. 

And I could shut it down in about 5 seconds. Depending on how many programs or Web pages I had open when I shut the computer down, I could have everything automatically reopened in as little as 30 seconds and no more than a minute. 

Despite its thin size, the Retina Pro has similar battery life to the hard-drive based MacBook Pros and comes with the same updated quad-core Intel mobile processors. And it offers the same Nvidia graphics chips as those computers with, in some cases, more graphics memory. But the Retina Pro’s screen is clearly its standout feature. The device’s display has four times the resolution of the base models of the regular MacBook Pros. It’s bright, vivid and super-sharp, although the difference between it and the older screens can be hard to tell unless you have them side-by-side. Apple pioneered its Retina display concept with the iPhone 4 and brought the technology to the iPad earlier this year. On-screen images and applications on both look much sharper than on previous models, and the screens on those older models look pixilated by comparison. On a Mac, a high-resolution display potentially offers more significant benefits. Users wanting to edit video can display a high-definition video at full 1080p resolution and still have plenty of room left over for editing controls and thumbnails of other images. Likewise, users editing pictures can zoom in on fine grained details while still being able to see a significant portion of the overall image. 

Even if you’re not into photo or video editing, you could still benefit from a high-resolution display. 

The new display allows users to greatly enlarge the text in e-books or Web pages without the words becoming fuzzy. 

At least it can in some cases. One of the Retina Pro’s shortcomings is that while Apple has updated its own applications for the display, very few programs or websites from other companies are designed to be used or viewed on it. The result is that text, images or applications can look worse than they would on a lower-quality screen because the computer has to stretch low-resolution fonts and pictures over a greater number of pixels. 

If you download a PDF document and view it in Apple’s Preview program, which has been updated for the new display, it looks beautiful. You can zoom in to the point that regular text is jumbo-sized and it still will look sharp and clear. 

Not so if you view the same document in Google’s Chrome browser via its built-in PDF reader. In that case, the more you zoom in, the fuzzier the text tends to look. And it’s not just PDFs. If you’re using Chrome, the text of typical websites can look fuzzy. Text looks better in Apple’s own Safari browser, but Web page graphics often look blurry. 

The problem isn’t limited to Web browsers. The Kindle app for the Mac also isn’t optimized for the new screen and the text looks out of focus when enlarged. Tweets in the Twitter app look fuzzy even at regular size. Many of these problems will be solved over time as developers update their apps, graphics and Web pages to better support the new display. But there are other reasons to pass on the Retina Pro, and one is price. 

The base model costs $2,200. That’s a staggering sum, given that you can buy a Windows laptop with the same chip and graphics processor — but no Retina display or flash drive — for less than a $1,000. 

And $2,200 gets you no bells and whistles. Add more memory, a faster processor and a larger flash drive to the Retina Pro and you can easily boost the price to more than $3,000. 

Then there’s the battery. Apple has sealed it up tight inside the Retina Pro. There’s no easy way to swap it out for another one if it runs out of juice or is at the end of its life. 

Unless you are a creative professional who’s looking to replace a desktop or a similarly high-end laptop, you likely don’t need the Retina Pro. If all you need is computer for regular office tasks, but you want one that’s thin, light and quick to boot, you can get a MacBook Air — or a similar Windowsbased ultrabook — for as little as $1,000. 

It won’t come with a Retina display, but you may not notice the difference. 

Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285 or twolverton@mercurynews. 

com. Follow him at www. 

mercurynews.com/troywolverton or Twitter.com/troywolv. 

Salesforce.. not leaving Numero Uno position in Cloud any time soon..

One company I am really impressed with is Salesforce.com. It is really one company, I am yet to hear any complains either from customers or employees.. definitely not from Stockholders ;-)

Salesforce has done great job in all front. I think Mark, is good in not making mistakes what Oracle & SAP usually makes. Unlike other competitor's whose majority of revenue source is either support or shelf-ware licenses, salesforce delivers real value to its customers. In doing so they are able to make clear distinction for  themselves. There ROI is immediate and drastically more than any of the conventional Enterprise Software makers. There is hardly any in-efficiency or wastage in the process. You get what you pay for and when you don't want, you turn off the switch (not that easy but still million times easier than traditional enterprise hosted software products.

It is matter of time when it will become de-facto standard for all the enterprise and hosted software will be thing of past. I think, last fort left is, back-office applications which are tremendously complex and different from customer to customer.  Even there, I feel it is more complicated as they are made complex by employees and consultants more to protect their jobs. I think we should be fine with that much of in-efficiency in the system.. otherwise there will be only robots left working in the world and very few robot makers.

Salesforce's competitors are trying hard to get into cloud space, but yet to make dent into it. Long way for them to catch up.

SOFTWARE WARS

Salesforce battles for position in cloud

Company to purchase BuddyMedia ahead of Oracle service launch

By Jeremy C. Owens

jowens@mercurynews.com 

San Francisco cloud-computing powerhouse Salesforce girded itself against assaults by large software companies Monday by officially announcing an agreement to buy enterprise social-media company Buddy Media for nearly $700 million.

Salesforce agreed to pay $467 million in cash for the New York company, along with providing $184 million in Salesforce stock and $38 million in vested options and restricted stock units, for a total current value of $689 million. Buddy Media’s board has already agreed to the deal, which is expected to close in the fall quarter.

Salesforce is in a hurry to build on its offerings as it faces increased competition from Redwood City-based Oracle and other software giants. Oracle has been aggressive in acquisitions in the cloud-computing space in the past few months, including spending $3.4 billion combined to buy RightNow Technologies and Dublin-based Taleo and last month’s $300 million purchase of Buddy Media rival Vitrue.

Buddy Media focuses on marketing through social networks, giving companies tools to manage accounts across multiple social networks while hosting all the software on remote servers, the basis for cloud computing. Also known as software as a service, or SaaS, cloud computing is quickly becoming the standard for enterprise offerings, and Salesforce has been ahead of the competition in the space. It claims more than 100,000 customers.

“This acquisition is the largest deal ever done by Salesforce. com. It is also the largest acquisition of a New York City tech company in the last five years. Quite simply, the offer was a great one and one that our board, shareholders and management thought made sense to take,” Buddy Media cofounder and CEO Michael Lazerow wrote in a blog post Monday.

However, Oracle — which appears ready to announce the launch of its Public Cloud service this week — is not the only company pushing into the cloud in an attempt to rival Salesforce. German titan SAP has agreed to spend a combined $7.7 billion on two Silicon Valley SaaS companies, San Mateo’s SuccessFactors and Sunnyvale’s Ariba. Intuit and IBM are among the other companies making smaller deals in the cloud space to offer enterprise customers the popular option.

Salesforce, founded by Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff in 1999 after he spent 13 years at Oracle, has a long head start on the competition, however, and believes that investment in marketing offerings will keep it in the lead.

“Social media has caused the biggest transformation in marketing since the ‘Mad Men’ era, causing (chief marketing officers) to completely rethink their strategies,” Marcel LeBrun, senior vice president of Salesforce’s social-media engagement service Radian6, said in the company’s news release. “By bringing together market leaders Radian6 and Buddy Media, we are doubling down on the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to provide CMOs with the ability to manage the entire social marketing life cycle.” Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdry doesn’t believe that will be enough for Salesforce to stave off Oracle, however, saying in a note Monday morning that the Buddy Media acquisition is not “something for investors to cheer about.” 

“With launch of Oracle Public Cloud on June 6th, Oracle is inducing a major technological challenge to Salesforce. Salesforce architecture may head to obsolescence sooner than some may think,” Chowdry wrote. 

Buddy Media — founded in 2007 with funding from Peter Thiel and Zynga CEO and co-founder Mark Pincus — does bring big clients to Salesforce’s stable, however, claiming eight of the top 10 U.S. advertisers, including Ford Motor, Hewlett-Packard and Mattel. Salesforce, which had a net loss in its most recent fiscal year after several years of profitability, said in the news release that the deal is likely to boost revenues but be a drag on earnings per share in the current fiscal year. 

Salesforce stock gained 23 cents, or 0.2 percent, Monday to close at $131.22.