IBM buying Ascential to bolster software unit

IBM has announced that it will acquire the Ascential Software Corporation for US$1.1 billion in an effort to broaden its offerings in the market for corporate software.

The New York Times reports (15 Mar.) that Ascential makes software that helps companies gather and combine information from different computer sources into one unified system. The acquisition makes IBM the largest player in the emerging business of data integration, one of the fastest-growing categories in the corporate software market.

The paper says that the company, with nearly 900 employees, will become a part of IBM's software unit, which in the last four years has made 20 acquisitions. In 2004 Ascential had revenue of US$271.9 million, an increase of 46 percent over the year before.

The NYT says that news of the deal, coming just three months after IBM announced the sale of its personal computer business to Lenovo, China's largest computer company, caused shares of Ascential to rise. $2.59, The companies hope to close the deal in the second quarter.

The paper says the two companies have long had close ties. In 2001, IBM paid US$1 billion to buy a large portion of the assets of Informix, a database software company, which left behind a smaller company that became Ascential.

Since then, IBM has been Ascential's most significant business partner, accounting for 10 percent to 15 percent of Ascential's revenue each year.

The two companies already have 550 customers together, and have often joined forces on marketing and engineering, according to IBM, reports the paper.

The NYT says the acquisition of Ascential will fill a hole in IBM's enterprise software offerings and allow it to offer its corporate customers a "unified view" of their data, regardless of where that data resides.

Ascential's most significant direct competitor is Informatica, an independent software company based in California, but, says the paper, the world's largest enterprise software companies are showing an increasing interest in the data integration market.

"Some of the biggest software companies in the world are now focused on data integration as a key technology, including Oracle and Microsoft and SAP and others," a Ascentia spokesman told the NYT.

The paper reports that analysts say that data integration is poised to become one of the enterprise software industry's fastest-growing categories as customers scramble to get more use of the data they accumulate.

According to IDC, the market research company, corporations will increase their worldwide spending on data integration technology and services from US$9.3 billion in 2003 to US$13.6 billion in 2008, says the paper.

Newspaper readers turning more and more to online news
 
Consumers are willing to spend millions of dollars on the web when it comes to music services like iTunes and gaming sites like Xbox Live. But when it comes to online news, they are happy to read it but loath to pay for it.

The New York Times reports (14 Mar.) that newspaper web sites have been so popular that at some newspapers, including The New York Times, the number of people who read the paper online now surpasses the number who buy the print edition.

The paper says this migration of readers is beginning to transform the newspaper industry. Advertising revenue from online sites is booming and, while it accounts for only 2 percent or 3 percent of most newspapers' overall revenues, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. And newspaper executives are watching anxiously as the number of online readers grows while the number of print readers declines,says the paper.

"For some publishers, it really sticks in the craw that they are giving away their content for free," said Colby Atwood, vice president of Borrell Associates Inc., a media research firm. The giveaway means less support for expensive news-gathering operations and the potential erosion of advertising revenue from the print side, which is much more profitable, reports the NYT.

"Newspapers are cannibalising themselves," said Frederick W. Searby, an advertising and publishing analyst at J. P. Morgan.

Nearly a decade after newspapers began building and showcasing their web sites, one of the most vexing questions in newspaper economics endures: should publishers charge for web news, knowing that they may drive readers away and into the arms of the competition?, says the paper.

The NYT says that of the America's 1,456 daily newspapers, only one national paper, The Wall Street Journal, which is published by Dow Jones & Company, and about 40 small dailies charge readers to use their web sites. Other papers charge for either online access to portions of their content or offer online subscribers additional features.

The New York Times on the web, which is owned by The New York Times Company, has been considering charging for years and is expected to make an announcement soon about its plans. In January, The Times's web site had 1.4 million unique daily visitors. Its daily print circulation averaged 1,124,000 in 2004, down from its peak daily circulation of 1,176,000 in 1993.

The NYT says most big papers are watching and waiting as they study the patterns of online readers. Analysts said that the growth in readers was slowing but that readers appeared to be spending more time on the web sites.

A report last week from the Online Publishers Association in the US underscored the challenges facing newspapers in selling news - internet users spent US$88 million for general news in 2004, or just 0.4 percent more than they paid in 2003, the report said; by comparison, they spent US$414 million on entertainment, up 90 percent.

For the most part, says the NYT., publishers make money on web sites by selling space to advertisers, and that is a booming business. A preliminary analysis of online revenues for about 700 daily newspaper web sites showed an average increase of 45 percent from 2003 to 2004, analysts told the NYT.

The paper says that perhaps the biggest obstacle for newspapers is that online readers have been conditioned to expect free news. "Most newspapers believe that if they charged for the Web, the number of users would decline to such an extent that their advertising revenues would decline more than they get from charging users," said one newspaper publisher.

However, the NYT says The Wall Street Journal experiment suggests the contrary - about 700,000 people subscribe to its online edition, with 300,000 of them subscribing to the web edition only and 400,000 subscribing to both the online and print editions. The print edition has 1.8 million subscribers.

Sony's digital projectors for US theatres
 
In the US., theatre group and art-house chain, Landmark Theatres, will become the first chain to install a new generation of digital projectors developed by Sony, which show movies at twice the resolution of previous digital projectors.

The New York Times report (15 Mar.) that Landmark will buy six of the Sony projectors when they become available in July, and over the next few years will install others in all 58 of its theatres.

The paper says Hollywood has been discussing the use of digital projectors, which show movies without using film, for the last several years, but fewer than 100 are currently used in theaters to show full-length features.

Substantial questions remain both about the projectors' technical merits and, more important, who would pay for them, says the NYT., adding that the main advantage of digital projection is the potential to save movie studios the expense of copying movies on film, which can cost more than $US1,000 a print.

The paper says theatre owners are waiting to see if the studios will find a way to subsidise the cost of the projectors, which can be US$100,000 each when the costs of the other needed hardware and software are included.

Landmark, however, chose to pay for the projectors itself, largely because it is building a business model different from that of most theatre chains.

The founders of Landmark, who together created Broadcast.com, an internet media site that they sold to Yahoo for about US$6 billion in 2001, are building a series of companies related to independent film and high-definition television, the NYT reports.

The paper says Landmark chose the new Sony model because it can display images at a resolution of 4096 by 2160 pixels, known as 4K resolution, compared with the previous generation of projectors with half the number of horizontal pixels.

US wireless deal for $US102.5 million

In the US., telco Verizon Wireless has just agreed to buy airwave licenses and other assets from Leap Wireless International for US$102.5 million to increase capacity in six states.

The New York Times/Bloombergs say (15 Mar.) that the spectrum in 20 locations includes 9 new markets in Michigan, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Arkansas,according to Verizon. The airwaves may also help Verizon enhance service where it already operates, including other parts of the four states as well as Alabama and upstate New York, says the paper.

Verizon, which was overtaken by Cingular Wireless last year as the nation's largest mobile phone company, is adding capacity for voice, video and internet services to meet customer demand, reports the NYT and Bloomberg

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications and the Vodafone Group of Britain, the world's biggest mobile phone operator.

Leap exited bankruptcy last year, reports the NYT and Bloombedrg, and the company will transfer its Michigan operations and about 25,000 customers to Verizon Wireless. Leap is leaving the state to focus on building strongholds in other markets.

Nokia's three new phones for US market

Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, has said it is introducing three new phones for the United States this year in a bid to increase its share of that market.

The New York Times/Reuters report (14 Mar.) that the phones are based on CDMA, a wireless technology used by Verizon Wireless and Sprint, the second- and third-biggest US mobile service providers, respectively. Nokia said recently it hopes to sell new phone to these companies.

The paper says that Virgin Mobile USA, a venture of Sprint and Virgin, plans to sell one of the new phones, but Nokia did not provide information about Verizon Wireless's or Sprint's plans.

The phone maker said it also hopes to sell the latest devices in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, says the NYT.

But the key focus will likely be the US market where the Finnish phone maker trails behind Motorola, says the NYT, adding that Nokia has had less success in the United States than in rest of the world due to its focus on GSM, the world's dominant standard.

Motorola is also touting three new GSM camera phones at the CTIA wireless exhibit where Nokia is showing its new phones. Other rivals, including Samsung Electronics, also plan to show phones to prospective US customers, reports the paper and Reuters.

Nokia said it plans in the fourth quarter to begin selling its new 6155i CDMA phone, which has a fold-over cover and a built-in zoom lens camera and supports streaming video, maps and other graphical applications.

The paper and Reuters say Nokia, which has been most successful at selling candy bar shape phones, lost some ground last year to rivals such as Motorola and Samsung as these companies were ahead of it with the popular fold-over phones.

Its 3155 CDMA phone, which it also expects to go on sale in the fourth quarter, also has a folding cover and extra memory for storing pictures as well as an integrated FM radio. It can also be hooked to a computer to transfer information such as phone numbers and addresses to desktop software, the paper and Reuters report.

Sandisk-News Corp. anti-piracy tech. deal
 
Sandisk will use an anti-piracy technology developed by a News Corp. subsidiary in portable memory cards designed to store pay-per-view movies and other digital content for cell phones, the companies have just annunced.

The New York Times/Reuters report (15 Mar.) says that Sandisk will show samples of the new flash cards in the third quarter and plans to begin production in the final three months of the year, the companies said in a statement.

The paper says the cards will include a digital-rights management technology called mVideoGuard Mobile DRM made by NDS Group, the News Corp. unit, the companies said in a statement. The portable memory cards could then be used in cellular phones and other handheld electronics.

According to the NYT/Reuters report, this year cellular phone makers are expected to introduce more than 200 models of phones with slots for memory cards, the companies said, referring to research from IDC.

China Telecom approval to open internet cafe chain

China's top fixed-line phone company, China Telecom, has just announced it has won approval to open a nationwide chain of internet cafes, leveraging a fast-expanding broadband network to try to generate new growth.

The New York Times/Reuters report (14 Mar.) that a company spokesman said China Telecom had won a license to operate the chain, but did not supply any details on how many outlets it plans nor what sort of business model it might employ.

Analysts said the cafes could provide incremental boosts to revenue and profits for the company, but were unlikely to rival contributions from its core, but maturing, fixed-line service, reports the paper.

Mobile carrier China Unicom kicked off an Internet cafe initiative in mid-2003, saying it would set up a chain of owned- and franchised shops, reports the NYT/AP, adding that as of the middle of last year, the chain, called Unicom Plaza, operated 367 stores across the country, according to a company report.

The paper says internet cafes are popular in China, attracting mostly males in their teens and early 20s who lack computers at home and use the cafes' high-speed broadband connections to play internet-based video games.

China Telecom and its chief fixed-line rival, China Netcom Group, have aggressively built out their broadband networks over the last few years, spending an estimated US$2.4 billion to upgrade their systems. Both are looking for new revenue sources as growth in China's maturing telecoms market -- the world's biggest with 316 million fixed-line and 340 million mobile users at the end of January, report the paper and Reuters.

But, says the NYT/Reuters, despite intensive spending on broadband, the service is estimated to have drawn only 42.8 million users by the end of last year, according to official data.

CTIA wireless show: Zi Corp seeks to simplify cell phones

You can do so many things with a cell phone now that it's getting hard to ind what you want on the device without clicking through menu after menu, says the New York Times/AP in a report (15 Mar.) from the CTIA Wireless 2005 show currently being staged in the US.

The paper says the show is devoted to cell phone pictures, music, e-mail, instant messaging, calendars, contacts, TV and video games, and nestled amid all those multimedia displays is a small Canadian company named Zi Corp. that offers a way to simplify the maze of navigation on a tiny device.

The NYT says Zi's new program ``Qix'' (pronounced `quicks') creates an index of everything on the phone, including address book entries, web bookmarks and applications such as a specific video game from one of dozens of mobile content providers featured on today's phones.

To access the index, you use the phone's keypad to type in the first few letters of a particular application or a contact name or phone number, says the paper

Zi said Virgin Mobile of Britain is starting a trial with the new program.

The NYT says another company using this week's wireless show to push cellular simplicity is Eastman Kodak, whose top executive delivered a keynote on Monday's opening.

Kodak hopes to make it easier for camera phone users to print out their photos -- with Kodak printers on Kodak paper -- rather than just sharing them as a digital attachment via wireless messaging, especially now that picture resolution is improving to a level comparable to standalone digital cameras, reports the NYT/AP.

To that end, Kodak was demonstrating a cell phone attachment for its EasyShare Printer Dock Plus, which is designed to print digital pictures directly from a Kodak camera.The attachment, essentially a cell phone cradle, was designed to connect directly with the data port on a Nokia handset, the NYT/AP report.

Nokia sued over 'exploding phone'

A Thai man who had his right leg and five toes on this left foot amputated after his mobile phone exploded is suing Nokia for 1m  Baht in damages.

The Register in the UK reports (15 Mar.) that Prasit Sriseeluang, 50 - who had his handset tucked in his shirt pocket at the time of the accident - was working near a high-voltage power pole when his phone rang. The handset then exploded, causing serious injuries to the welder.

The online news service says public prosecutors are suing Nokia Thailand for damages, claiming that the phone had defective parts, reports Thai newspaper The Nation.

Nokia Thailand has denied that the handset was faulty, says The Register.

The Register says the Finnish mobile phone giant has been plagued by a string of reports of exploding handsets but is adamant that each of the cases was down to counterfeit batteries.

In December Nokia began applying a holographic sticker to its mobile phone batteries to prevent fake power packs being inadvertently purchased as the real thing, The Register adds.

UK warning: supermarkets next in line for phishing attacks

Online retailers are likely to become the next target of 'phishing' scams, UK police have warned.

The Register reports (14 Mar.) that Sscam emails that form the basis of phishing attacks attempt to trick users into handing over their account details and passwords. First seen in the UK approximately 18 months ago, phishing emails are becoming increasingly sophisticated, directing users to bogus websites which accurately reproduce the look and feel of legitimate sites.

The Register says that up till now online banking websites or auction sites such as eBay have been the main target but the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit warns online retailers that they need to be on their guard, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.
 
The publication says industry experts say they have warned all the big retailers that they consider them to be the next targets and are helping them to secure their sites against the attacks they think are coming. The experts say they are working with the online retailers, but are also working to educate their customers and make them aware of the problems.

The Register says online retailers, including Tesco and Sainsbury, have been exchanging information through the Interactive Media Retailer Group in order to co-ordinate the development of anti-fraud strategies, learning from the experiences of the banking industry. Online banking fraud losses reached £12m in 2004, according to figures from banking industry association APACS released last week.

The banking industry blames these losses on either straightforward phishing scams or the use of Trojans to capture security credentials through keystroke logging, a tactic which allows fraudsters to subsequently raid online banking accounts, reports The Register.

Dutch ISPs cracks down on file-sharing

Five major Dutch internet providers have just agreed to cooperate in a crackdown on illegal file sharing, saying they will send warnings to clients suspected of swapping copyrighted music, film and software files.

The New York Times/AP report (14 Mar.) that he providers said they will forward letters from the Brain Institute, which represents the entertainment industry in the Netherlands, warning clients that sharing copyrighted material is against the law.

The paper says the decision was a compromise, because the providers refused to reveal customers' names or addresses directly to the Brain Institute.

In December 2003, the Dutch Supreme Court set an international precedent by ruling that software used to share files was legal. But it didn't rule out that individuals could be prosecuted for using such software to share copyrighted work, says the NYT.

The paper and AP say the decision left the Brain Institute in a similar position as the American recording industry, which has sued song-swappers for tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

The Brain Institute -- a popular target of Dutch hackers -- was founded in 1998 to fight what the entertainment industry sees as piracy and copyright infringement, says the paper. It can trace the Internet addresses of computers that are being used to trade files but has no way of finding out who owns them without a court order.

AT&T to test WiMax high-speed wireless technology

In the US., AT&T has announced it will test a much-hyped high-speed wireless technology later this year to see if it can be used to replace traditional data lines to businesses.

The New York Times/Reuters report (14 Mar.) that if the technology, known as WiMax, lives up to expectations, AT&T said it could be used as early as 2006 to replace expensive data lines that AT&T now leases from local telephone companies to connect to its network.

AT&T will start the first test of a prototype version of WiMax in May in Middletown, New Jersey, with a commercial trial later this year, says the paper and Reuters.

AT&T, which has agreed to be bought by SBC Communications for US$16 billion, is the largest seller of voice and data services to businesses. Of about 270,000 business buildings in the United States, Eslambolchi said AT&T had its own network running to about 7,000.

With WiMax, AT&T told Reuters it would "not only be able to lower your cost structure, but most importantly be able to generate new services and new capabilities."

WiMax, a technology standard backed by Intel and several other corporations, has been billed as a possible competitor for high-speed wired data services, promising faster connections over much longer distances than previous wireless technologies.

AT&T will target data speeds of up to six megabits per second for each user, over a distance of two to five miles, reports Reuters and the NYT.

Intel extends Wireless MMX

Intel has updated its Wireless MMX mobile multimedia technology, paving the way for a revision of its XScale PXA ARM-based processor family.

The Register reports (14 Mar.) that Intel has unveiled Wireless MMX 2, a series of 64-bit SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) instructions not unlike the SSE extensions developed for its desktop processors. Essentially, they're designed to apply programs to data streams, such as 3D imagery, video and audio. Intel is pitching the technology at handset makers looking to create ever more feature-rich devices - typically through enhanced media handling, says The Register.

According to The Register, the chip maker launched Wireless MMX a year ago, bringing the MMX multimedia-oriented instruction set over from the x86 world to its ARM CPUs, along with a number of unique ARM-only instructions and the integer instructions from the SSE set.

Intel said Wireless MMX 2 will be available in "future Intel XScale technology-based platforms", but provided no roadmap for their arrival, says The Register.