Yes Wii Can!

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Nintendo had to be tickled to learn that the new White House will include a Wii. President-elect Obama told the New York Times that his girls got one of the consoles for Christmas and that he himself was putting in some time at the virtual bowling alley, with considerably more success than he had at the real-world lanes.

But Obama’s flirtation with the Wii is nothing compared to his deep devotion to his BlackBerry, which his advisors want him to stop using because of legal and security concerns. “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” Obama said Wednesday in an interview. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” What’s an endorsement like that worth if Research in Motion had to pay for it on the celebrity market? At least $25 million, maybe twice that, said agents asked by the New York Times. “You always want the celebrity to be a good fit with your brand, and is anybody considered a better communicator right now than Barack Obama, or a better networker?” said Fran Kelly, chief executive of the Arnold Worldwide ad agency. “It couldn’t have a better spokesperson.” This, of course, could all change if Obama can’t find the reset button for the economy.

Link.

OLPC downsizes

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ArsTechnica reports that

In an announcement posted to the OLPC wiki, Negroponte reveals that the organization will have to significantly scale back and cut costs in order to continue operating. The new budget constraints have necessitated major layoffs and pay cuts.

"Like many other nonprofits that are facing tough economic times, One Laptop per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources. Today we are reducing our team by approximately 50% and there will be salary reductions for the remaining 32 people," he wrote. "While we are saddened by this development, we remain firmly committed to our mission of getting laptops to children in developing countries."

Another victim of OLPC budget cuts is the Sugar project, a Linux-based education software platform that OLPC developed for its laptops. This cut is unsurprising, because OLPC has gradually been moving away from Sugar and has increasingly sought to support Windows. It is still unclear whether OLPC will continue to encourage its large buyers to adopt Sugar, but Negroponte says unambiguously that the organization will be working on transitioning Sugar development entirely to the community.

The report goes on to describe the OLPC project’s “extreme dependence on economy of scale” as its Achilles heel.

The organization was not able to secure the large bulk orders that it had originally anticipated and fell short of meeting its target $100 per unit price. The worldwide economic slowdown has made it even more difficult for OLPC to find developing countries that have cash to spare on education technology. The latest restructuring effort could help OLPC regain its focus, but the failure of its past attempts to do so don’t really provide much confidence.

Hmmm… I’m sorry that they’ve hit trouble, but my sympathy is tempered by irritation at the way the project seems to be re-focussing on running Windows.

Microsoft offers Vista replacement. Servers fall over.

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley.

Microsoft surely anticipated a crowd when it announced this week that 2.5 million current users of Windows Vista SP1 would be allowed to download a free beta of the upcoming Windows 7 starting at noon Pacific today (see “Microsoft offers Vista users something beta“), but it apparently wasn’t ready for the Wal-Mart-on-Black-Friday kind of mob that gathered outside its virtual doors and collectively clicked its servers into whimpering submission. With the Web site faltering under the load, Microsoft called a timeout and said it needed to add “some additional infrastructure support to the Microsoft.com properties before we post the public beta.” No ETA was given, and prospective downloaders have been left to mill about aimlessly, checking their favorite tech news sites for a new go signal and talking among themselves about the benefits of BitTorrent.

There’s nothing wrong with Vista, of course. Nothing at all.

Amazing — a really neat application from Microsoft

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Microsoft Research has come up with an ingenious PC application called Songsmith.

Just open up Songsmith, choose from one of thirty different musical styles, and press record. Sing whatever you like – a birthday song for Mom, a love song for that special someone (they’ll be impressed that you wrote a song for them!), or maybe just try playing with your favorite pop songs. As soon as you press “stop”, Songsmith will generate musical accompaniment to match your voice, and play back your song for you. It’s that simple.

Robert Scoble was given a demo by the developers in his Vegas hotel room.

The economics of phishing

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Conventional wisdom is that phishing represents easy money. In this paper we examine the economics that underly the phenomenon, and find a very different picture. Phishing is a classic example of tragedy of the commons, where there is open access to a resource that has limited ability to regenerate. Since each phisher independently seeks to maximize his return, the resource is over-grazed and yields far less than it is capable of. The situation stabilizes only when the average phisher is making only as much as he gives up in opportunity cost.

From “A Profitless Endeavor: Phishing as Tragedy of the Commons” by Cormac Herley and Dinei Florencio of Microsoft Research.

Power lunching

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Dubya had a lunch party today at the White House. Guests were his Pa, President-elect Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Apparently it was Obama’s idea. It was the first time since 1981 that all living presidents have been together at the White House.

Photo here.

Moore’s Law in pictures

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Technology Review has an interesting photographic record of Moore’s Law. It opens with this image (from Texas Instruments).

The first working integrated circuit on germanium was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958. This prototype has a transistor (small left dot) attached to two gold wires and a capacitor (middle black dot). The germanium itself, secured on a glass slide, is divided into three resistors by the tabs at the bottom. By showing that all three types of components could work in the same slice of germanium, Kilby offered a way to improve the performance and lower the cost of electronic devices.

How to solve the Jobs ‘health’ problem

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Well, well.  This from the BBC Blog:

It seems the cat and mouse game between Apple boss Steve Jobs and the press and blogosphere has ended … for the moment.

This morning he sent out an email that said “I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community”. As you may have read in our news story, Mr Jobs has admitted to being ill these past few months but not knowing the reason why until recently. He has now said it is due to “a hormone imbalance that has been ‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy”.

I’m delighted he’s not at death’s door. But the fact remains that Apple is still perceived as a one-man band. The only way to address the problem in the long run is for Jobs to move towards a more collegial managerial style, so that in the end the stock market (and the blogosphere) begins to see that Apple isn’t totally dependent on its CEO’s health. They could perhaps take a leaf out of Microsoft’s book: remember how Billg’s departure was preceded by rule by a troika of Mundie, Ozzie and Ballmer?

Lucy Kellaway Twaddle Awards

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Bullshit is still thriving.

And now for the most eagerly awaited part of the awards: the jargon section.

● The first award in this group is for Nouns Moonlighting As Verbs, which was so popular that the judges are giving out three gongs. The 2008 Olympics introduced the world to the verb “to medal”. This entry medals with a bronze. The Silver medal in this category goes to “to auspice”, while gold goes to the verb “to sunset”. AOL used the verb to great effect last summer in declaring that it was canning some products. “Bluestring, Xdrive and AOL Pictures will be sunset. [They] have not gained sufficient traction in the marketplace or the monetisation levels necessary.” In other words, they were flops.

● In recognition of the economic climate the judges are giving a special award this year for Best Term For Sacking People. An honorary mention goes to the new phrase “dynamic rightsizing”, which means regular sackings, only more exciting and souped-up. The winner, for its sheer disingenuity, goes to “upgrade”. A reader reports that when she was fired by her US company in mid-2008 she was told: “We are going to upgrade you with immediate effect. We are going to allow you to move on in order that you can you use your talents and skills more effectively and thus upgrade your career and opportunities.”