Microsoft sells 20 million Vista licenses

Microsoft claims Windows Vista is off to a fast start, having sold more than 20 million copies since its January 30 consumer release.

By comparison, in its first two months, Windows XP sold 17 million copies, Microsoft said.

“We are encouraged to see such a positive consumer response to Windows Vista right out of the gate,” Corporate Vice President Bill Veghte said in a statement Monday. “While it’s very early in the product lifecycle, we are setting a foundation for Windows Vista to become the fastest-adopted version of Windows ever.”

Of course, the PC market has grown substantially since XP hit store shelves. In 2001, worldwide PC shipments totaled 136 million units, while last year the industry shipped 227 million computers, according to IDC.

And Microsoft’s figures include not only boxed copy sales and those included on new PCs, but also people who bought Windows XP during the holiday season and have applied for their free Vista upgrade since the mainstream launch of Vista.

In an interview, Windows marketing director Bill Mannion said that the upgrade program did help the sales figures, but said it wasn’t the driving factor. “It’s boosting the overall number, but it’s certainly not the core component of the 20 million,” he said.

PC makers also say that they are encouraged by early results for Windows Vista.

“Overall we’ve seen a pretty good reaction to the release of Vista,” said Kenneth Walker, chief technologist at PC maker Gateway.

Both Microsoft and the PC makers also say they are seeing a shift to higher-end versions of Vista. When XP made its debut in 2001, it came in two main flavors–Home and Professional. The company eventually added the Tablet PC and Media Center editions, and over time, Media Center became the dominant version on retail shelves. Vista comes in six flavors–Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate, as well as a Starter Edition only sold on new PCs in emerging markets.

Mannion said that Microsoft is even seeing better-than-expected sales of the pricey Ultimate edition. “We have relatively modest expectations for Ultimate, but it’s exceeding that on both new PCs and the packaged product.”

Walker said that Gateway has seen more customers on its Web site choosing the Ultimate edition than it initially expected. Customers who go to the Web often buy high-end machines, and those buyers may want to try to “future-proof” their PC by opting for the most full-featured version they can get.

He likens it to car buyers who buy more horsepower than they need. “How many people buy the V8 instead of the V6?” Walker said. Or how many go with the optional towing package, “even though they have nothing to tow?”

Hewlett-Packard, which sells most of its PCs through retail stores, said it is has seen “not much interest” in the Ultimate version thus far. The company said it has seen consumers opt for PCs with more memory as well as machines with Windows Vista Home Premium.

Bruce Greenwood, vice president of notebooks and North American channel sales for HP, said that with both laptops and desktops, HP is seeing a shift away from the lowest memory systems and those with Vista Home Basic toward machines with 1GB or more of memory.

Although Microsoft is counting in its sales totals those who bought XP machines late last year and have applied for a free “Express Upgrade” to Vista, most PC makers have only this month started to ship the copies. The program has been a source of considerable frustration for many buyers who have had trouble registering and getting approved for their upgrade.

Mannion said Microsoft hopes such problems are largely a thing of the past.

“That appears to be behind us now,” Mannion said. “We understand manufacturers to be in full shipment mode.”

Are web applications taking over software?

Remember a time before away messages, back when it seemed like Winamp would never lose its footing atop the media player hierarchy? To say that the Internet and its related applications have been dynamic throughout their existences would certainly be an understatement. Last semester I spoke about the emergence of the “second dot-com boom” and how user-driven Web sites like Digg and YouTube have recently been able to rise to the top of the pack. In years to come, yet another transformation will certainly grow in prominence: the shift from desktop-based to Web-based applications. As new technologies are developed, Web pages are being fitted with functionality unlike ever before. Sites boasting keyboard shortcuts and drag-and-drop capabilities have significantly reduced the demand for traditional standalone computer programs.

You may be wondering why this sort of transition is of any major importance for a typical college student. Well, let’s say that you want to use a library or lab computer to quickly check something out on Instant Messenger. If your chat client of choice isn’t already installed, the installation itself might actually take longer than using the program itself (if you’re even able to install new software without an administrative account). Simply pointing your Web browser to Meebo.com allows you to use their snazzy Web interface for all your messaging needs without having to install or configure a thing. Meebo supports AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ among others, and even allows you to connect to more than one at a time. Take that, AIM Express!

Of course, Meebo isn’t the only Web-based application that has been gaining notoriety as of late. Google has recently set its crosshairs on Microsoft Office with its Calendar, Gmail, Docs & Spreadsheets, and Page Creator applications, prompting a number of major companies to reconsider seriously the tools they’re utilizing to do business. A couple of different development teams have even come up with Web-based operating systems – EyeOS and YouOS, to name a few. These alternatives aren’t meant to replace a standard OS, but rather to complement it by providing a complex environment that can be accessed from anywhere.

Web-based applications have four major advantages over their more common desktop counterparts: simplicity, versatility, accessibility, and affordability. Web applications are simple because they don’t need to be installed to your computer, and as a result, don’t take up any space on your hard drive. Their versatility lies in being cross platform, meaning that they run just the same on any Windows, Mac, or Linux boot. While these are certainly enticing characteristics, the major selling point of Web software is the global accessibility.

Your Google account, for example, can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection, keeping all your stored documents right at your fingertips. In addition, most Web software is either free or at least available for a fraction of the cost of desktop applications. Adobe has recently announced plans for a free Web-based version of Photoshop, the industry standard program for graphic editing and design. The main appeal here is the price tag, a whole $579 cheaper than in stores. However, it would be ridiculous to expect the online version to be anywhere near as powerful as the original. Even if Adobe could recreate all the same features in an online version, they wouldn’t, since they’re giving it away for free. Clearly, for programs existing in both desktop and Web-based forms, there’s a tradeoff between the four aforementioned characteristics and the unmatched functionality of a full software package.

The point I’m trying to convey is simply that as Web technologies advance, the lines between the two are certainly becoming blurred.

Privacy for Internet names moves forward

Many owners of Internet addresses face this quandary: Provide your real contact information when you register a domain name and subject yourself to junk or harassment. Or enter fake data and risk losing it outright.

Help may be on the way as a key task force last week endorsed a proposal that would give more privacy options to small businesses, individuals with personal Web sites and other domain name owners.

“At the end of the day, they are not going to have personal contact information on public display,” said Ross Rader, a task force member and director of retail services for registration company Tucows Inc. “That’s the big change for domain name owners.”

At issue is a publicly available database known as Whois. With it, anyone can find out the full names, organizations, postal and e-mail addresses and phone numbers behind domain names.

Hearings on the changes are expected next week in Lisbon, Portugal, before the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or
ICANN, the main oversight agency for Internet addresses.

Resolution, however, could take several more months or even years, with crucial details on implementation still unsettled and a vocal minority backing an alternative.

Under the endorsed proposal — some six years in the making — domain name registrants would be able to list third-party contact information in place of their own — to the chagrin of businesses and intellectual-property lawyers worried that cybersquatters and scam artists could more easily hide their identities.

“It would just make it that much more difficult and costly to find out who’s behind a name,” said Miriam Karlin, manager of legal affairs for International Data Group Inc., publisher of PC World and other magazines. She said she looks up Whois data daily to pursue trademark and copyright violators.

Privacy wasn’t a big consideration when the current addressing system started in the 1980s. Back then, government and university researchers who dominated the Internet knew one another and didn’t mind sharing personal details to resolve technical problems.

Today, the Whois database is used for much more. Law-enforcement officials and Internet service providers use it to fight fraud and hacking. Lawyers depend on it to chase trademark and copyright violators. Journalists rely on it to reach Web site owners. And spammers mine it to send junk mailings for Web site hosting and other services.

And Internet users have come to expect more privacy and even anonymity. Small businesses work out of homes. Individuals use Web sites to criticize large corporations or government officials. The Whois database, for many, reveals too much.

The requirements for domain name owners to provide such details also contradict, in some cases, European privacy laws that are stricter than those in the United States.

Registration companies generally don’t check contact information for accuracy, but submitting fake data could result in missing important service and renewal notices. It also could be grounds for terminating a domain name.

Over the past few years, some companies have been offering proxy services, for a fee, letting domain name owners list the proxy rather than themselves as the contact.

It’s akin to an unlisted phone number, though with questionable legal status. The U.S. government has banned proxies entirely for addresses ending in “.us,” even after many had already registered names behind them.

Critics also complain that such services can be too quick or too slow — depending on whom you ask — in revealing identities under legal pressure.

“Right now there’s no regulation, no accreditation, no standards,” said Margie Milam, general counsel for MarkMonitor, a brand-protection firm. “Some can take weeks, which can slow down investigations.”

The task force proposal, known as operational point of contact, would make third-party contacts a standard offering. Domain name owners could list themselves, a lawyer, a service provider or just about anyone else; that contact would forward important communications back to the owner.

Details must still be worked out, but the domain name registrant rather than the proxy would likely be clearly identified as the legal owner, unlike the current, vague arrangement. ICANN’s staff also pressed for more clarity on to whom and under what circumstances the outside contact would have to release data.

Although that proposal received a slight majority on the Whois task force, some stakeholders including businesses and lawyers have pushed an alternative known as special circumstances. Domain name holders would have to make personal contact details available, as they do today, unless they can justify a special circumstance, such as running a shelter for battered women.

“On the whole, society is much better off having this kind of transparency and accountability,” said Steven Metalitz, an intellectual-property lawyer on the task force.

ICANN’s Council of the Generic Names Supporting Organization plans public hearings in Lisbon, after which it could make a recommendation or convene another task force to tackle implementation details.

Supporters of the new proposal remain hopeful that resolution is near.

“A lot of public interest groups have been waiting a long time to see if this process actually works or if it’s just a charade,” said Wendy Seltzer, a non-voting task force member and fellow with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “If this turns out to have been for naught, you will have a lot of frustrated people.”

Google to anonymise personal data after 18 months

Privacy bodies have welcomed Google’s decision to anonymise personal data it receives from users’ web searches. The firm previously held information about searches for an indefinite period but will now anonymise it after 18 to 24 months.

“This is an extremely positive development,” said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a US-based watchdog.

However, governments could still force Google to hold onto data or hand it over to authorities.

“By anonymising our server logs after 18 to 24 months, we think we’re striking the right balance between two goals: continuing to improve Google’s services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices,” a statement from the search giant said.

It added: “Unless we’re legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymise our server logs after a limited period of time.”

Peter Fleischer, Google’s privacy counsel for Europe, said the decision has been taken after consulting with privacy bodies in the US and Europe. He said: “We believe that privacy is one of the cornerstones of trust. We will be retroactively going back into our log database and anonymising all the information there.”

Google collects and stores data from each query. It holds information such as the search term itself, the unique address of the PC being used, known as the IP address, and details of how a user makes searches, such as the browser used and previous queries to Google. That information can contain private data about a user, and could be used to build a detailed picture of the user’s habits or lifestyle. Google says it was using this information to help improve its different services and to monitor how its search engine was functioning.

Privacy groups are concerned about how the data collected by Google – and other web firms – could be used to monitor people’s online habits. Richard Clayton, a researcher at Cambridge University specialising in web traceability, said Google’s announcement was positive but had not gone far enough.

“It’s a step forward but I would like to see them anonymising data in a much shorter period.

“There is no justification for holding on to the data for two years.”

Mr Clayton said the data Google collected was useful to the firm in improving its services only in the short term. He said that Google was hiding behind the European directive in setting time limits on how long it should hold on to the data.

“There is no sense of whether this directive even applies to web search logs,” he said.

He said the real reason Google was holding on to the data was because of the cost involved in anonymising it. He said he also had concerns about how the firm was ensuring that held data could not be traced back to individual users.

Google has said it will alter the data so that users’ searches cannot be traced back to an individual’s computer. But Mr Clayton said the recent row over search data released by AOL showed that identification of users could still be made even without a machine’s unique IP address.

AOL released data to academics last year relating to millions of search queries carried out by its users. While there was no direct identifying data, there was enough information in the searches to build profiles of users.

It is not yet clear if other search engines will follow suit.

Yahoo said that it would hold onto web data for as long as EU law required – but the firm did not say what it would do with the information beyond the 24 months demanded by the law. In a statement the firm said: “Our data retention practices vary according to the diverse nature of our services.

“We are reviewing the European Data Retention Directive as it comes into force across Europe. Our services covered by the directive will comply with the laws as they are enacted in each country that we have a presence.”

Open-Xchange (Partially) Embraces GPL

Open source isn’t always synonymous with collaborative community development, even when it comes to open source collaboration applications.

Open-Xchange is hoping to change that for its open source collaboration suite with the launch of a new community project partially licensed under the GPL .

The new collaboration project comes on the heels of Open–Xchange’s recent big ISP win with 1&1 Internet and will see an open source project being set up around the Open-Xchange 1&1 MailXchange server.

The server will be released under the GPL, while the AJAX user interface for the server is being made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

Just don’t expect to be able to take the newly available components and be able to directly clone what 1&1 has.

“Open-Xchange makes a clear distinction between the source code related to the program and digital content/trademarks/Java browser script code,” Paul Sterne, CFO and general manager of Americas for Open-Xchange told internetnews.com.

“The source code of the project, program and digital content, are freely available to use, share and change/remix.”

Sterne added that right now, Open-Xchange has released the source code to two program components — the collaboration server and the administration module. The third and fourth program components, the installer for Ubuntu and the Wiki OXtender, will be released as soon as they have been vetted by the community.

The source code for the digital content related to Web access to the server is also available.

“The digital content related to Web access to the administration module is still being developed and vetted by the community,” Sterne explained. “So the application currently works via a standard browser with the server, but the admin module can only be activated via scripting.”

The collaboration project will be hosted in Olpe, Germany at Open-Xchange’s development lab, while communication with the project maintainers will be managed via Bugzilla. Developers must enter into an attribution and assignment before they can contribute code via Bugzilla to the maintainers.

The code will be subjected to peer review in the wiki or the forums. Once a code module is ready for release, the Open-Xchange maintainers will enter it into the CVS version control system.

The licenses that Open-Xchange has chosen are also intended to help facilitate collaboration while still providing the protections that software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors need.

“They wanted protection that their OX-branded and private label SaaS offerings would not be copied by other commercial SaaS providers,” Sterne said. “GPL didn’t offer any protection, so we innovated and put the digital content under the Creative Commons: Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike” license.

On the GPL side, Open-Xchange’s choice of license stands in contrast to that of its competitor Zimbra, which offers its namesake collaboration suite under a modified Mozilla Public License, plus attribution.

Sterne noted that while he could not speculate on why other companies select MPL versus GPL, his company likes GPL because it is the standard and the most people understand it.

“We like it because it conforms to the basic principles of the open source movement: Freedom to use, share and change.”