Sunday
Microsoft Windows Vista
Windows Vista
The next version of Windows finally has an official name: Windows Vista.
The advertising tagline for Windows Vista is "Clear, Confident, Connected: Bringing clarity to your world," according to a video of the announcement posted by Microsoft.
The company also said Friday that the first beta, or test release, of Windows Vista is slated for release by Aug. 3. That release will be targeted at developers and IT professionals, said Brad Goldberg, general manager of Windows product development.
Microsoft is also planning to begin testing a server version of the operating system by Aug. 3, with final shipment slated for 2007. The company said that version will not bear the Vista name. Instead, its name will "follow existing naming convention" for Windows Server. The current version is called Windows Server 2003. The software giant spent roughly eight months researching potential names for the upcoming version of Windows.
The Windows Vista logo "We went through a process of focus groups and research to find out what name would convey idea of clarity. We think Vista captures the idea of clarity," he said.
The new name debuted Thursday before roughly 10,000 attendees of a Microsoft sales conference in Atlanta, Goldberg said.
The Vista moniker breaks with the company's tradition of using version numbers or acronyms for new Windows releases. The current version of the operating system, Windows XP--short for "experience," according to Microsoft--debuted in October 2001.
Ah, but what's in a name? Microsoft Vista's three design goals include better security, new ways to organize information, and seamless connectivity to external devices, the company said. Microsoft will provide more detail on Vista features Aug. 3, Goldberg said. The company first announced plans for Longhorn in 2001. It was originally expected to debut in 2004. The company has since revamped the feature list and launch date several times. Longhorn has changed significantly since Microsoft first demonstrated an early version in 2003. The company has dropped plans to include its all-new WinFS file system and has also changed the way it's implementing a new Web services architecture, known as Indigo, and a new graphics engine, dubbed Avalon.
Goldberg said Microsoft will provide more information on WinFS, Indigo and Avalon in September at the company's Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles. "That's where we will unveil our entire development picture," he said.
Among the key features of Microsoft Vista are a new searching mechanism, lots of new laptop features, parental controls and better home networking. There will also be visual changes, thanks to Avalon, ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself. On the business side, it will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also cut costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted.
The next version of Windows finally has an official name: Windows Vista.
The advertising tagline for Windows Vista is "Clear, Confident, Connected: Bringing clarity to your world," according to a video of the announcement posted by Microsoft.
The company also said Friday that the first beta, or test release, of Windows Vista is slated for release by Aug. 3. That release will be targeted at developers and IT professionals, said Brad Goldberg, general manager of Windows product development.
Microsoft is also planning to begin testing a server version of the operating system by Aug. 3, with final shipment slated for 2007. The company said that version will not bear the Vista name. Instead, its name will "follow existing naming convention" for Windows Server. The current version is called Windows Server 2003. The software giant spent roughly eight months researching potential names for the upcoming version of Windows.
The Windows Vista logo "We went through a process of focus groups and research to find out what name would convey idea of clarity. We think Vista captures the idea of clarity," he said.
The new name debuted Thursday before roughly 10,000 attendees of a Microsoft sales conference in Atlanta, Goldberg said.
The Vista moniker breaks with the company's tradition of using version numbers or acronyms for new Windows releases. The current version of the operating system, Windows XP--short for "experience," according to Microsoft--debuted in October 2001.
Ah, but what's in a name? Microsoft Vista's three design goals include better security, new ways to organize information, and seamless connectivity to external devices, the company said. Microsoft will provide more detail on Vista features Aug. 3, Goldberg said. The company first announced plans for Longhorn in 2001. It was originally expected to debut in 2004. The company has since revamped the feature list and launch date several times. Longhorn has changed significantly since Microsoft first demonstrated an early version in 2003. The company has dropped plans to include its all-new WinFS file system and has also changed the way it's implementing a new Web services architecture, known as Indigo, and a new graphics engine, dubbed Avalon.
Goldberg said Microsoft will provide more information on WinFS, Indigo and Avalon in September at the company's Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles. "That's where we will unveil our entire development picture," he said.
Among the key features of Microsoft Vista are a new searching mechanism, lots of new laptop features, parental controls and better home networking. There will also be visual changes, thanks to Avalon, ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself. On the business side, it will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also cut costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted.
Wednesday
Bill Gates No magic answer to tech worker shortage
At Microsoft's annual gathering with university researchers, executives again bemoaned the lack of computer scientists, both globally and in the United States.
Part of the problem, say both academics and Microsoft executives, is that the technology field just hasn't done a good job of positioning itself as hip and exciting. There needs to be more of a sense of romance and magic, says Kevin Schofield, general manager of Microsoft Research communications and strategy.
"You don't have to go to Hogwarts to learn magic," Schofield said in an interview referring to the fictional school in the Harry Potter series.
In a speech to 400 university researchers gathered Monday at the company's Faculty Summit in Redmond, Wash., Chairman Bill Gates admitted that he has not read enough Harry Potter--and noted that majors like physical education are growing in popularity while computer science continues to lag, even though there are plenty of jobs. In fact, the number of computer science majors dropped 60 percent between 2000 and 2004. "I'm certainly very worried about it," Bill Gates said. "We're very short of what we'd like to get. The competition for someone that has the right background is just phenomenal."
Gates made similar observations at last year's event. But even as Bill Gates deplored what he sees as a lack of both people and research in computer science, he made his annual pitch for more attention from those who are in the field. This year Microsoft offered funding in three areas, including its perennial favorite: grants for those that are exploring ways of writing more secure code.
Microsoft is also looking for research proposals from those who want to study software tools that can automate work for scientists doing research in different areas. By looking at the work that different scientists do, the company can see whether there is enough commonality to create specific research tools or even a sort of Microsoft Office for researchers.
"The competition for someone that has the right background is just phenomenal."
-- Bill Gates Chairman, MicrosoftSchofield noted that many researchers already use Office, but he said it is too soon to say whether Microsoft will pursue a product geared specifically toward scientists.
"It's clear to me that e-science continues to gain momentum," Schofield said, noting that he is a researcher and not a product planner. He added, though, that there will clearly be software written that automates researchers' tasks. "I hope some of them may come from Microsoft." The last area that Microsoft put out a call for research in is the area of preserving digital memories. The company has long been pursuing such technologies. One project, known as "Sense Cam," combines a wearable digital camera with other sensors to automatically record a person's activity throughout the day, using motion sensors and pulse readings as a guide for when the camera should take its 2,000 pictures. The readings from the camera can be combined with the MyLifeBits software, which creates a sort of electronic journal of one's day.
The idea is based on the 60-year-old "memex" concept outlined in an Atlantic Monthly article by Vannevar Bush. But with memory and disk space continuing to drop in price, Schofield said, such concepts are now possible. "We think there are hundreds if not thousands of (ways that) people can take this...and really apply it today."
As part of its call for research, Microsoft will make available prototypes of the Sense Cam and MyLifeBits products.
On Tuesday, the researchers on hand for the conference will have a chance to check out a number of projects from Microsoft Research in a three-hour DemoFest. Among the three dozen projects are Teddy, an experimental consumer robot, and PlayAnywhere, a demo that turns any flat surface, such as a table or a whiteboard, into a display or input device.
But even as there are areas that show great promise, the breakthroughs won't happen unless there are enough people doing the research, said Princeton University engineering school dean Maria Klawe, who appeared with Bill Gates in the conference's main presentation. Previous Next Of particular concern, Klawe said, is the fact that the already small number of women in computer science is actually declining in some areas. After years of participating in talks with women and girls of all ages, Klawe said, she is convinced more is needed, ideally something from Hollywood that glamorizes computer work in the same way that the popularity of law and medicine have helped draw more women to those fields.
Just 15 percent of doctoral computer science students are women. At the top research schools, about the same number of undergraduate computer science students are women.
"We're down there below physics in some cases," Klawe said. Klawe said that at this point her best hope is that Harry Potter's friend Hermione Granger decides to pursue a career in computer science. Gates added that it is clear the industry is losing talented girls and women at many stages of their academic career, and that there probably is no single solution. "I don't know the magic answer," said Bill Gates.
Part of the problem, say both academics and Microsoft executives, is that the technology field just hasn't done a good job of positioning itself as hip and exciting. There needs to be more of a sense of romance and magic, says Kevin Schofield, general manager of Microsoft Research communications and strategy.
"You don't have to go to Hogwarts to learn magic," Schofield said in an interview referring to the fictional school in the Harry Potter series.
In a speech to 400 university researchers gathered Monday at the company's Faculty Summit in Redmond, Wash., Chairman Bill Gates admitted that he has not read enough Harry Potter--and noted that majors like physical education are growing in popularity while computer science continues to lag, even though there are plenty of jobs. In fact, the number of computer science majors dropped 60 percent between 2000 and 2004. "I'm certainly very worried about it," Bill Gates said. "We're very short of what we'd like to get. The competition for someone that has the right background is just phenomenal."
Gates made similar observations at last year's event. But even as Bill Gates deplored what he sees as a lack of both people and research in computer science, he made his annual pitch for more attention from those who are in the field. This year Microsoft offered funding in three areas, including its perennial favorite: grants for those that are exploring ways of writing more secure code.
Microsoft is also looking for research proposals from those who want to study software tools that can automate work for scientists doing research in different areas. By looking at the work that different scientists do, the company can see whether there is enough commonality to create specific research tools or even a sort of Microsoft Office for researchers.
"The competition for someone that has the right background is just phenomenal."
-- Bill Gates Chairman, MicrosoftSchofield noted that many researchers already use Office, but he said it is too soon to say whether Microsoft will pursue a product geared specifically toward scientists.
"It's clear to me that e-science continues to gain momentum," Schofield said, noting that he is a researcher and not a product planner. He added, though, that there will clearly be software written that automates researchers' tasks. "I hope some of them may come from Microsoft." The last area that Microsoft put out a call for research in is the area of preserving digital memories. The company has long been pursuing such technologies. One project, known as "Sense Cam," combines a wearable digital camera with other sensors to automatically record a person's activity throughout the day, using motion sensors and pulse readings as a guide for when the camera should take its 2,000 pictures. The readings from the camera can be combined with the MyLifeBits software, which creates a sort of electronic journal of one's day.
The idea is based on the 60-year-old "memex" concept outlined in an Atlantic Monthly article by Vannevar Bush. But with memory and disk space continuing to drop in price, Schofield said, such concepts are now possible. "We think there are hundreds if not thousands of (ways that) people can take this...and really apply it today."
As part of its call for research, Microsoft will make available prototypes of the Sense Cam and MyLifeBits products.
On Tuesday, the researchers on hand for the conference will have a chance to check out a number of projects from Microsoft Research in a three-hour DemoFest. Among the three dozen projects are Teddy, an experimental consumer robot, and PlayAnywhere, a demo that turns any flat surface, such as a table or a whiteboard, into a display or input device.
But even as there are areas that show great promise, the breakthroughs won't happen unless there are enough people doing the research, said Princeton University engineering school dean Maria Klawe, who appeared with Bill Gates in the conference's main presentation. Previous Next Of particular concern, Klawe said, is the fact that the already small number of women in computer science is actually declining in some areas. After years of participating in talks with women and girls of all ages, Klawe said, she is convinced more is needed, ideally something from Hollywood that glamorizes computer work in the same way that the popularity of law and medicine have helped draw more women to those fields.
Just 15 percent of doctoral computer science students are women. At the top research schools, about the same number of undergraduate computer science students are women.
"We're down there below physics in some cases," Klawe said. Klawe said that at this point her best hope is that Harry Potter's friend Hermione Granger decides to pursue a career in computer science. Gates added that it is clear the industry is losing talented girls and women at many stages of their academic career, and that there probably is no single solution. "I don't know the magic answer," said Bill Gates.
Tuesday
Profits, not jobs, on the rebound in Silicon Valley
Things are looking up at Wyse Technology, a venerable maker of computer terminals. Unless, that is, you happen to want to work for the company here in Silicon Valley. Responding to booming demand in Asia and in Europe, Wyse is adding new development teams in India and China and expanding its worldwide work force to about 380, from 260. Its profits are recorded here--but almost none of its new jobs.
Amid widespread signs of economic recovery in the region, Wyse is emblematic of its economy, in which demand, sales and profits are rising quickly while job growth continues to stagnate. In the last three years, profits at the seven largest companies in Silicon Valley by market value have increased by an average of more than 500 percent while Santa Clara County employment has declined to 767,600, from 787,200. During the previous economic recovery, between 1995 and 1997, the county, which is the heart of Silicon Valley, added more than 82,800 jobs.
Changes in technology and business strategy are raising fundamental questions about the future of the valley, the nation's high technology heartland. In part, the change is driven by the very automation that Silicon Valley has largely made possible, allowing companies to create more value with fewer workers. Some economists are wondering if a larger transformation is at work--accelerating a trend in which the region's big employers keep a brain trust of creative people and engineers here but hire workers for lower-level tasks elsewhere. "What has changed is that Silicon Valley has continued to move up the value chain," said AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information Management and Systems and professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. That has meant that just as low-skilled manufacturing jobs fled the region starting in the 1970s, now software jobs are also leaving.
The phenomenon is only the latest twist in the region's boom-and-bust history, marked by repeated cycles of innovation and renewal over the last five decades. Industries based on personal computing, hand-held devices and electronic commerce have emerged and thrived here, and each brought waves of new jobs. Now, almost everyone agrees that Silicon Valley is coming back, and employment there grew from March to May, but the area still has about 10,000 fewer jobs than there were a year ago. The increase in profits "has been very dramatic, but there's no job growth," said Doug Henton, president of Collaborative Economics, a regional consulting company.
Some former technology workers have given up on the sector--or moved out of the Bay Area altogether. Catherine Haley, 32, went to work in 1997 as a project manager and a Web designer for technology companies in the area, but after quitting the consulting firm KPMG in 2002, she found it extremely difficult to find a full-time job. In 2004, after working in piecemeal assignments for two years, she gave up on the job market and nearly moved back to Boston. Instead, she decided to pursue her passion--art--and is now majority owner of a gallery in San Francisco.
She does not miss fighting for work, she said, partly because the high-tech economy has lost its charm. "Unfortunately, the number of interesting projects and companies out there has really come down," she said. In some cases, as at Wyse, the job growth in the sector is taking place elsewhere--in lower-cost, higher-growth markets. A new management team, installed as part of a buyout of the company that was completed in April, is leading a restructuring that includes adding 100 workers in India and 35 in Beijing so far this year. At the start of the year the company had 90 percent of its work force in Silicon Valley; now the figure is 48 percent, and only 15 percent of its engineering talent remains here, largely because of the technology development teams it is building in India and China. "It was pretty clear that growth was going to come first in Asia,".
Wyse's chief executive commented "We had the desire to get engineering teams to those markets as quickly as we could." Acording to the director for the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, the growth of employment outside Silicon Valley was "not a nefarious plot," but a logical development. "Companies are going where there are customers and, in some cases, where it's cheaper to produce," he said.
Hoping to keep costs low, Electronic Arts, the video game maker based just north of here in Redwood City, already has development studios in Vancouver, Montreal, London, Chicago and Orlando, Fla. It is debating how much of its work in the future it can move to lower-cost regions, said Jeff Brown, a company spokesman. "We will always have a presence here because there is a core of talent," he said. "But there is strong pressure to figure out exactly which jobs it is essential to keep in California."
The issue is not just outsourcing, though, but also big leaps in productivity. Cisco, the behemoth maker of Internet equipment, now has annual sales of $680,000 per employee, compared with $480,000 in 2001. One key measure, known as value added per employee, rose 3.7 percent in 2004, to $222,000 in economic value per worker. That compares with $85,000 per worker in the rest of the country, according to data reported by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a regional economic research group.
By a number of other measures, companies are watching profits and sales rise. An analysis published in April by The San Jose Mercury News found that the top 100 public companies in the region had revenues of $336 billion in 2004, an increase of 14 percent from the previous year. Henton said that measure, while not entirely indicative of what is going on because it includes worldwide sales, gives a good sense of the growth here.
"It's a clear recovery," Levy said. "It's a high-productivity jobless recovery." Previous Next In the past, much of the job growth has come from investment by venture capitalists in start-up companies. That engine is starting to rev up again, with venture capitalists putting $7.4 billion into 724 Silicon Valley companies in 2004, according to the National Venture Capital Association. That is up 17 percent from 2003, but still far below the $34 billion invested in 2000, at the peak of the phenomenon.
Also, newer start-ups are under pressure from their venture-capital investors to outsource work to lower-cost regions, said Cynthia Kroll, a senior regional economist at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She added that the venture capitalists, burned as the last cycle turned downward, are much more closely watching how start-ups spend money, including how they hire.
"That would be slowing growth of employment," Kroll said. The venture capitalists are being highly selective, said Margot Heiligman, 39, who is doing consulting work for technology companies but is in the market for a full-time job. Heiligman moved to San Francisco last November when her husband took a trumpeter position with the city's symphony orchestra.
Heiligman previously oversaw the internal technology department for the New York law firm of Proskauer Rose and spent six years as director of business development for Swisscom, a telecommunications company in Bern, Switzerland. She is eager to find work at a start-up company, but has found that the venture backers of such companies are very selective, hiring acquaintances or people who have worked at companies they know well.
Amid widespread signs of economic recovery in the region, Wyse is emblematic of its economy, in which demand, sales and profits are rising quickly while job growth continues to stagnate. In the last three years, profits at the seven largest companies in Silicon Valley by market value have increased by an average of more than 500 percent while Santa Clara County employment has declined to 767,600, from 787,200. During the previous economic recovery, between 1995 and 1997, the county, which is the heart of Silicon Valley, added more than 82,800 jobs.
Changes in technology and business strategy are raising fundamental questions about the future of the valley, the nation's high technology heartland. In part, the change is driven by the very automation that Silicon Valley has largely made possible, allowing companies to create more value with fewer workers. Some economists are wondering if a larger transformation is at work--accelerating a trend in which the region's big employers keep a brain trust of creative people and engineers here but hire workers for lower-level tasks elsewhere. "What has changed is that Silicon Valley has continued to move up the value chain," said AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information Management and Systems and professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. That has meant that just as low-skilled manufacturing jobs fled the region starting in the 1970s, now software jobs are also leaving.
The phenomenon is only the latest twist in the region's boom-and-bust history, marked by repeated cycles of innovation and renewal over the last five decades. Industries based on personal computing, hand-held devices and electronic commerce have emerged and thrived here, and each brought waves of new jobs. Now, almost everyone agrees that Silicon Valley is coming back, and employment there grew from March to May, but the area still has about 10,000 fewer jobs than there were a year ago. The increase in profits "has been very dramatic, but there's no job growth," said Doug Henton, president of Collaborative Economics, a regional consulting company.
Some former technology workers have given up on the sector--or moved out of the Bay Area altogether. Catherine Haley, 32, went to work in 1997 as a project manager and a Web designer for technology companies in the area, but after quitting the consulting firm KPMG in 2002, she found it extremely difficult to find a full-time job. In 2004, after working in piecemeal assignments for two years, she gave up on the job market and nearly moved back to Boston. Instead, she decided to pursue her passion--art--and is now majority owner of a gallery in San Francisco.
She does not miss fighting for work, she said, partly because the high-tech economy has lost its charm. "Unfortunately, the number of interesting projects and companies out there has really come down," she said. In some cases, as at Wyse, the job growth in the sector is taking place elsewhere--in lower-cost, higher-growth markets. A new management team, installed as part of a buyout of the company that was completed in April, is leading a restructuring that includes adding 100 workers in India and 35 in Beijing so far this year. At the start of the year the company had 90 percent of its work force in Silicon Valley; now the figure is 48 percent, and only 15 percent of its engineering talent remains here, largely because of the technology development teams it is building in India and China. "It was pretty clear that growth was going to come first in Asia,".
Wyse's chief executive commented "We had the desire to get engineering teams to those markets as quickly as we could." Acording to the director for the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, the growth of employment outside Silicon Valley was "not a nefarious plot," but a logical development. "Companies are going where there are customers and, in some cases, where it's cheaper to produce," he said.
Hoping to keep costs low, Electronic Arts, the video game maker based just north of here in Redwood City, already has development studios in Vancouver, Montreal, London, Chicago and Orlando, Fla. It is debating how much of its work in the future it can move to lower-cost regions, said Jeff Brown, a company spokesman. "We will always have a presence here because there is a core of talent," he said. "But there is strong pressure to figure out exactly which jobs it is essential to keep in California."
The issue is not just outsourcing, though, but also big leaps in productivity. Cisco, the behemoth maker of Internet equipment, now has annual sales of $680,000 per employee, compared with $480,000 in 2001. One key measure, known as value added per employee, rose 3.7 percent in 2004, to $222,000 in economic value per worker. That compares with $85,000 per worker in the rest of the country, according to data reported by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a regional economic research group.
By a number of other measures, companies are watching profits and sales rise. An analysis published in April by The San Jose Mercury News found that the top 100 public companies in the region had revenues of $336 billion in 2004, an increase of 14 percent from the previous year. Henton said that measure, while not entirely indicative of what is going on because it includes worldwide sales, gives a good sense of the growth here.
"It's a clear recovery," Levy said. "It's a high-productivity jobless recovery." Previous Next In the past, much of the job growth has come from investment by venture capitalists in start-up companies. That engine is starting to rev up again, with venture capitalists putting $7.4 billion into 724 Silicon Valley companies in 2004, according to the National Venture Capital Association. That is up 17 percent from 2003, but still far below the $34 billion invested in 2000, at the peak of the phenomenon.
Also, newer start-ups are under pressure from their venture-capital investors to outsource work to lower-cost regions, said Cynthia Kroll, a senior regional economist at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She added that the venture capitalists, burned as the last cycle turned downward, are much more closely watching how start-ups spend money, including how they hire.
"That would be slowing growth of employment," Kroll said. The venture capitalists are being highly selective, said Margot Heiligman, 39, who is doing consulting work for technology companies but is in the market for a full-time job. Heiligman moved to San Francisco last November when her husband took a trumpeter position with the city's symphony orchestra.
Heiligman previously oversaw the internal technology department for the New York law firm of Proskauer Rose and spent six years as director of business development for Swisscom, a telecommunications company in Bern, Switzerland. She is eager to find work at a start-up company, but has found that the venture backers of such companies are very selective, hiring acquaintances or people who have worked at companies they know well.
Friday
AOL launches video search service
America Online quietly launched a new video-on-demand search service Thursday, opening the doors for millions of Internet users to view music videos, news segments and other content from parent company Time Warner, whose mountain of media holdings gives AOL an advantage over rivals Google and Yahoo.
The beta service, called AOL Video, offers free access to search and playback for more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets from Time Warner, including television programs and music videos, movie trailers from Warner Bros. and news clips from CNN, MSNBC and others. AOL's Singingfish multimedia search engine, which the company acquired two years ago, will complement the new service by pointing visitors to audio and video from across the Web.
AOL will announce the test service Tuesday, but it can be previewed by visiting AOL.com's new beta home page, and clicking on the video search tab. On Tuesday, AOL is also expected to announce it is developing a video hub, which is a specialized page for watching the latest multimedia content. It is expected to launch this summer.
"Today, AOL begins rolling out their new, improved, and free video search service (beta) and so far, pardon the pun, I like what I see," Gary Price of SearchEngineWatch.com wrote in a blog.
Though still a test, AOL Video is the company's biggest, most comprehensive effort to court Web surfers with a free pass to Time Warner entertainment and media video assets, which have been available only to AOL members. As the company has faced subscriber losses for dial-up and broadband service, it has retrenched with plans to migrate content and services to the Web in order to boost traffic and sell lucrative video advertisements.
The plan is particularly important to AOL as it seeks to cash in on a resurgence in online advertising that's been driven largely by search-marketing giants Yahoo and Google. Online video advertising is seen by market analysts as a big growth market.
But at least one industry watcher took a skeptical view of the AOL service.
"I'm not convinced that just because you have content you own, that it will make you better in search," said John Battelle, who wrote a book on Web search that will be published in September. "On the other hand, they did buy Singingfish, so they are serious about this market."
Google and Yahoo have both introduced video search engines in the last six months. Google started offering playback of video clips from Unicef, Greenpeace, CNET Networks and others for the first time last week with the use of a proprietary downloadable player. Google did not disclose how much material its database holds, but the company is regularly soliciting new partners. Yahoo doesn't provide a playback feature.
AOL is banking on free on-demand video to be its trump card. As Google and Yahoo have engaged in a search-technology features war over the last year, AOL has slowly mixed more of its content into Web search as a means to gain an edge in the marketplace.
Already, AOL's video search engine has access to 15,000 pieces of content, with an average playback length of three minutes, from Universal, Dow Jones, Reuters and the Associated Press. AOL also plays back the content in a proprietary video player, which supports technology already installed on PCs, but visitors do not have to download an application.
AOL has an advantage in the search-video game with its advertising capabilities and breadth of content. The company has strong ties to Hollywood through its parent company's Warner Bros. studios, among other properties, and can leverage that to outdo video assets from Google and Yahoo. The company is also selling and running 15-second commercials that will run before a select group of Time Warner-owned video clips.
Google has yet to place commercials before or adjacent to video.
Previous Next The technology for AOL Video includes speech-to-text processing that enables not only searches by title, description and artist but also searches for keywords within the body of the video. The technology combines internal software developed by AOL and its Singingfish.
Singingfish specializes in scouring the Web for video and audio clips and then pointing visitors to sites where they can play back the media. In recent weeks, Singingfish announced a slew of content partnerships with companies such as Atom-Films, CBSNews.com, Hollywood.com, Like Television, ManiaTV.com, MarketWatch and The One Network.
Yahoo, which launched a finalized version of its video search in May, boasts strong Hollywood ties in CEO Terry Semel, a former Warner Bros. chief. But the company has said that it has no plans for now to let visitors play back video from its search engine. Yahoo is also forming a media group based in Santa Monica, Calif., to house various entertainment property and to court Hollywood. Expanding from offering text search into copyrighted audio and video, however, puts the search providers in legal peril. Earlier on Thursday, Google raced to remove links to downloadable copyrighted content, including the "The Matrix Revolutions" and episodes of the "Family Guy" cartoons, from its video search service. They had been uploaded by the public.
The beta service, called AOL Video, offers free access to search and playback for more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets from Time Warner, including television programs and music videos, movie trailers from Warner Bros. and news clips from CNN, MSNBC and others. AOL's Singingfish multimedia search engine, which the company acquired two years ago, will complement the new service by pointing visitors to audio and video from across the Web.
AOL will announce the test service Tuesday, but it can be previewed by visiting AOL.com's new beta home page, and clicking on the video search tab. On Tuesday, AOL is also expected to announce it is developing a video hub, which is a specialized page for watching the latest multimedia content. It is expected to launch this summer.
"Today, AOL begins rolling out their new, improved, and free video search service (beta) and so far, pardon the pun, I like what I see," Gary Price of SearchEngineWatch.com wrote in a blog.
Though still a test, AOL Video is the company's biggest, most comprehensive effort to court Web surfers with a free pass to Time Warner entertainment and media video assets, which have been available only to AOL members. As the company has faced subscriber losses for dial-up and broadband service, it has retrenched with plans to migrate content and services to the Web in order to boost traffic and sell lucrative video advertisements.
The plan is particularly important to AOL as it seeks to cash in on a resurgence in online advertising that's been driven largely by search-marketing giants Yahoo and Google. Online video advertising is seen by market analysts as a big growth market.
But at least one industry watcher took a skeptical view of the AOL service.
"I'm not convinced that just because you have content you own, that it will make you better in search," said John Battelle, who wrote a book on Web search that will be published in September. "On the other hand, they did buy Singingfish, so they are serious about this market."
Google and Yahoo have both introduced video search engines in the last six months. Google started offering playback of video clips from Unicef, Greenpeace, CNET Networks and others for the first time last week with the use of a proprietary downloadable player. Google did not disclose how much material its database holds, but the company is regularly soliciting new partners. Yahoo doesn't provide a playback feature.
AOL is banking on free on-demand video to be its trump card. As Google and Yahoo have engaged in a search-technology features war over the last year, AOL has slowly mixed more of its content into Web search as a means to gain an edge in the marketplace.
Already, AOL's video search engine has access to 15,000 pieces of content, with an average playback length of three minutes, from Universal, Dow Jones, Reuters and the Associated Press. AOL also plays back the content in a proprietary video player, which supports technology already installed on PCs, but visitors do not have to download an application.
AOL has an advantage in the search-video game with its advertising capabilities and breadth of content. The company has strong ties to Hollywood through its parent company's Warner Bros. studios, among other properties, and can leverage that to outdo video assets from Google and Yahoo. The company is also selling and running 15-second commercials that will run before a select group of Time Warner-owned video clips.
Google has yet to place commercials before or adjacent to video.
Previous Next The technology for AOL Video includes speech-to-text processing that enables not only searches by title, description and artist but also searches for keywords within the body of the video. The technology combines internal software developed by AOL and its Singingfish.
Singingfish specializes in scouring the Web for video and audio clips and then pointing visitors to sites where they can play back the media. In recent weeks, Singingfish announced a slew of content partnerships with companies such as Atom-Films, CBSNews.com, Hollywood.com, Like Television, ManiaTV.com, MarketWatch and The One Network.
Yahoo, which launched a finalized version of its video search in May, boasts strong Hollywood ties in CEO Terry Semel, a former Warner Bros. chief. But the company has said that it has no plans for now to let visitors play back video from its search engine. Yahoo is also forming a media group based in Santa Monica, Calif., to house various entertainment property and to court Hollywood. Expanding from offering text search into copyrighted audio and video, however, puts the search providers in legal peril. Earlier on Thursday, Google raced to remove links to downloadable copyrighted content, including the "The Matrix Revolutions" and episodes of the "Family Guy" cartoons, from its video search service. They had been uploaded by the public.
