Citizendium was meant to represent an advance on Wikipedia. Compared to the flame wars and defacement that occasionally blight articles on the popular online encyclopedia, Citizendium founder Larry Sanger wanted to create a place for the world to share its knowledge in a more controlled atmosphere. He saw it as somewhere that expertise would be given its due and where the discussion could rise above the rabble (see today’s news for Wikipedia’s own latest attempt to control the crowd).

It only added to the intrigue that Sanger and Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s Svengali, had fallen out badly - indeed, were in dispute over how much credit each should get for the creation of Wikipedia in the first place (see Sanger’s Wikipedia page for more).

Now, Sanger tells me, he wants to move on from Citizendium, and is looking for a suitable institution to take over management of his pet project - though he promises he will not leave it in the lurch (see the comment added below). Continue reading "Citizendium founder ready to jump ship"

“Good enough” used to be Microsoft’s mantra: why pay more for corporate IT when Windows on the server works well enough in most situations?

That same argument has been turned against it by a succession of rivals, from Linux to Google Apps. These and many others have exposed Microsoft’s feature-creep and often left it defending the higher-cost option (and led it to look to defensive alliances like one with Nokia - see note below).

In emerging markets, though, Microsoft has less of an entrenched business to defend and is freer to innovate. Take today’s news from Redmond, of a Java-like environment with the potential to turn hundreds of millions of standard mobile phones into simple internet-connected devices. Continue reading "For Microsoft innovation, look to emerging markets"

The unveiling of Nokia’s new Booklet 3G is the second piece of news this month to highlight the striking change that has gone on in the relationship between the once implacable enemies from the mobile and PC worlds. For both companies this makes eminent sense - up to a point.

The first development was the agreement to put Microsoft’s Office on Nokia’s handsets (though timing and product details were entirely absent). This involved the tacit admission from Microsoft that its Windows Mobile platform was losing ground. With RIM, Apple and Google making the running, it was time to seed its software on other platforms, even if that meant cozying up to Nokia. Continue reading "The Nokia/Microsoft truce, Part 2"

The US may have cleared Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, but there’s still a view among some people who have been close to this transaction that it won’t be the easy sell in Europe that Wall Street seems to assume.

According to this view, Oracle won’t get the same free pass to acquire Java that it got from the Department of Justice, but will be forced to accept some sort of undertaking to ensure that licensing of Java does not become overly restrictive. Given the central part Java has played in building a counter-weight to Microsoft in the software industry, it isn’t hard to see why European regulators might be interested. There have been rumblings that SAP has been lobbying hard with Brussels on this issue.

If so, then someone forgot to tell Hasso Plattner. The chairman of SAP’s supervisory board, and a co-founder of the company, Plattner was in Silicon Valley late this week, and I got the chance to ask him how he feels about Java passing to Oracle.

Continue reading "SAP’s Plattner: Oracle control of Java is not a problem"

It’s hard to know how much to read into the gains that Bing has notched up in its first eight weeks, but one thing’s for sure: if it hadn’t shown these early signs of life Microsoft would currently be facing a barrage of criticism and some very difficult decisions.

The latest figures from comScore today show Bing clawing back half a percentage point of the US search market for Microsoft in July. At 8.9 per cent, its share is now up nearly a point from the 8.0 per cent recorded in May. Continue reading "The Bing bounce"

Next month it will be precisely ten years since the US Patent and Trademark Office issued patent number 5960411 to Amazon.com.

This is the case that did more than any other to draw attention to a US patenting system run amok. It gave Amazon protection for its “1-click” check-out system. Armed with this official seal of exclusivity, Amazon quickly persuaded a judge to block a rival system used by Barnes & Noble. Continue reading "For Amazon, the patent shoe is on the other foot"

Eric Schmidt likes to claim that competition for Google’s search users is “just one click away”.

It’s easy to brush that off as a gesture to appease regulators, or just plain paranoia. But there’s a clear element of truth to it.

ComScore’s latest analysis of the US search market, released today, rubs in the point that Google’s users have already found out how to click elsewhere: they just aren’t doing it that much yet. Continue reading "Microsoft’s challenge: turning Yahoos into Bingers"

Internet filters have become more powerful and continue to be used more widely for government censorship - as shown most recently in this week’s report from the OpenNet Initiative on the state of the art in the Middle East and Africa.

So it’s worth celebrating when the rising tide of official censorship is kept at bay, even if such victories are hedged with qualifications, and are by no means certain to last.

After earlier backing off under international pressure, China has officially dropped its demand for the intrusive Green Dam software to be installed on all PCs sold in the country, though it will still be required in internet cafes. And Malaysia has apparently abandoned its plan to construct a filter at its national internet gateway, at least for now.